Originally Posted by
General_Kirby
Which airport will want to send a very important part of their infrastructure to a Nats office miles away? Once it's all set up they can't exactly change ANSPs easily can they. Good for Nats but for airports?
Exactly this. I expect NATS' interest in remote towers is primarily about locking customers in to a situation that would be prohibitively difficult and expensive to extricate themselves from if they ever wished to change service provider, or take ATC in-house.
All those staff cross-trained on other airports so it's impossible to pin down just who 'belongs' to which one, living miles away from the airport in question or where other ANSPs provide remote services from? Lovely jubbly.
It's a model that's worked well for NATS with the airports that are provided with approach services from LTCC, at least until Gatwick left the fold - but even then it was only Tower, can you imagine trying to untangle an approach sector from Swanwick?