Originally Posted by
eglnyt
ATC staffing levels will be part of the contract between the Airport and NATS. If the Airport wanted a more guaranteed ATC presence after hours it could add that to the contract. Of course it would then have to cover the additional costs for that.
One potential benefit of Remote towers would be that where several Airports have an infrequent need to cover after hours they could share that extra resource with other Airports with a similar need. That's been done elsewhere but the question of staff with multiple ratings for different airports is contentious and we won't know until there is more than one Airport run from the same place whether the CAA will allow it.
The bottom line is something that invariably businesses default to. Do not dispute that the TWR could be remoted to Swanwick but unlike LCY SOU also provides their own in-house APS, so that would also need remoting.
If AGS decided to go it alone with ATC provision maybe BOH could bury the hatchet and start talking to AGS on a cost sharing project to provide APS for both BOH and SOU at one location. Currently there is considerable duplication of resources (with an obvious cost impact) with each unit providing their own service. Going back many years, when the two airports were on much better terms, during the airport redevelopment the radar feed needed to be relocated from the old SOU tower to the current one. To accomplish this a group of the SOU APS controllers temporarily relocated to operate "Solent" from BOH.