When an operation is reliant on visual, ‘analogue’ data, that is data that cannot be accessed, analysed, shared, augmented or enhanced. In short, it can’t be harnessed to improve the operation. Once you digitise those views, you open up a whole new world of possibilities.

A Hybrid Tower is a ‘digital extension’, delivering the advanced ATM vision that comes with a digital facility but from within an existing, traditional tower.  

You’re on the flight deck, sitting on stand and ready to start engines. You call to the tower to request permission to depart, but what if the clearance you get back doesn’t come from a human air traffic controller, but a computer?

Since the days of the first control tower 100 years ago – complete with its flags and lamps – airport air traffic control has followed one very simple principle – see aircraft, control aircraft.   But as airports have grown in size over the century, it’s become more and more difficult to give the air traffic controllers the best possible view of […]

Earlier this year we started a project looking at whether we could apply a combination of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and ultra-HD camera technology to help cut weather- related delays at Heathrow. Here’s an update on what we’re doing next.

I was in Brussels last month for Eurocontrol’s Artificial Intelligence in Aviation event for a chance to cut through the hype and look at real, practical ways in which this disruptive technology can help transform how the aviation industry works, and the challenges that exist in getting there.  

The idea that a digital tower can mean only that you look to replicate exactly what a controller can already see – the application we see most of around the world – is forcing constraints on the technology that don’t need to exist. This technology is revolutionary, so why strive to only recreate what we already have?