Sydney Airport tower fire
It’s happened at LHR too - as recently as last year. They didn’t appear to have any ‘backup’ aerdrome control facility either - I daresay that it’d be fairly impractical to have any form of replacement tower unless Airservices rolls out the remote tower concept as a backup capability.
My understanding is that they have evolved this to use their 360° simulator, basically switch off the image projectors and run it in Low Visibility mode.
And, they are trialling AI https://www.nats.aero/news/nats-tria...rt-cut-delays/
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Sydney aerodrome control frequencies are all transmitted from the control tower itself (except ATIS which comes from the Airservices radio tower at Woronora).
135.1 is transmitted from the Airservices tower at Kings Tableland (Wentworth Falls, Blue Mountains) as are a number of other area and Centre frequencies. Hence the need for a relay if using 135.1 for TWR/GND/DEL, but anything in the air should be OK.
135.1 is transmitted from the Airservices tower at Kings Tableland (Wentworth Falls, Blue Mountains) as are a number of other area and Centre frequencies. Hence the need for a relay if using 135.1 for TWR/GND/DEL, but anything in the air should be OK.
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Just an update after listening to the recordings...
Sydney Aerodrome became a CTAF during the evacuation. Sydney Director (presumably controlled from the TMA control building) would vector aircraft onto final approach and then control services would terminate once established on final. They would use 120.5 as CTAF and call Director once on the ground to cancel SAR.
I'm actually shocked they don't have a better disaster recovery (DR) setup. A mission-critical service such as this usually does.
Another transport organisation in Sydney (who I cannot name) has fantastic backups - radio backups to keep crucial areas live in case the Telstra links go down, and then a DR site so if the main control room is evacuated they can remotely switch to the DR site and be operational (using other staff already on site for other duties) within minutes (then the main staff can travel about 20 minutes to the DR site if the evac/outage will last). Loss of radio comms generally won't jeapordise passenger safety for these guys, but with aircraft, ATC provides positive separation and traffic information, so it's absolutely critical. Yes, I hear you say there is TCAS, but that is really a last resort.
It seems all the non-aerodrome transmitters (eg. Approach, Director, Departures, Centre, etc) are duplicated at secondary sites, but not the aerodrome control positions. Hence the requirement for CTAF when the Tower was unavailable, with very limited traffic (as well as inbound only). It would be expensive and potentially complex to duplicate the required aerodrome functions (radar, ADS-B, comms, etc) and still there would be limited or no visual (which is important when controlling TWR and GND), depending on the chosen site. Would be interesting to be a fly on the wall in the incident reviews...
Sydney Aerodrome became a CTAF during the evacuation. Sydney Director (presumably controlled from the TMA control building) would vector aircraft onto final approach and then control services would terminate once established on final. They would use 120.5 as CTAF and call Director once on the ground to cancel SAR.
I'm actually shocked they don't have a better disaster recovery (DR) setup. A mission-critical service such as this usually does.
Another transport organisation in Sydney (who I cannot name) has fantastic backups - radio backups to keep crucial areas live in case the Telstra links go down, and then a DR site so if the main control room is evacuated they can remotely switch to the DR site and be operational (using other staff already on site for other duties) within minutes (then the main staff can travel about 20 minutes to the DR site if the evac/outage will last). Loss of radio comms generally won't jeapordise passenger safety for these guys, but with aircraft, ATC provides positive separation and traffic information, so it's absolutely critical. Yes, I hear you say there is TCAS, but that is really a last resort.
It seems all the non-aerodrome transmitters (eg. Approach, Director, Departures, Centre, etc) are duplicated at secondary sites, but not the aerodrome control positions. Hence the requirement for CTAF when the Tower was unavailable, with very limited traffic (as well as inbound only). It would be expensive and potentially complex to duplicate the required aerodrome functions (radar, ADS-B, comms, etc) and still there would be limited or no visual (which is important when controlling TWR and GND), depending on the chosen site. Would be interesting to be a fly on the wall in the incident reviews...
Just an update after listening to the recordings...
Sydney Aerodrome became a CTAF during the evacuation. Sydney Director (presumably controlled from the TMA control building) would vector aircraft onto final approach and then control services would terminate once established on final. They would use 120.5 as CTAF and call Director once on the ground to cancel SAR.
I'm actually shocked they don't have a better disaster recovery (DR) setup. A mission-critical service such as this usually does.
Another transport organisation in Sydney (who I cannot name) has fantastic backups - radio backups to keep crucial areas live in case the Telstra links go down, and then a DR site so if the main control room is evacuated they can remotely switch to the DR site and be operational (using other staff already on site for other duties) within minutes (then the main staff can travel about 20 minutes to the DR site if the evac/outage will last). Loss of radio comms generally won't jeapordise passenger safety for these guys, but with aircraft, ATC provides positive separation and traffic information, so it's absolutely critical. Yes, I hear you say there is TCAS, but that is really a last resort.
It seems all the non-aerodrome transmitters (eg. Approach, Director, Departures, Centre, etc) are duplicated at secondary sites, but not the aerodrome control positions. Hence the requirement for CTAF when the Tower was unavailable, with very limited traffic (as well as inbound only). It would be expensive and potentially complex to duplicate the required aerodrome functions (radar, ADS-B, comms, etc) and still there would be limited or no visual (which is important when controlling TWR and GND), depending on the chosen site. Would be interesting to be a fly on the wall in the incident reviews...
Sydney Aerodrome became a CTAF during the evacuation. Sydney Director (presumably controlled from the TMA control building) would vector aircraft onto final approach and then control services would terminate once established on final. They would use 120.5 as CTAF and call Director once on the ground to cancel SAR.
I'm actually shocked they don't have a better disaster recovery (DR) setup. A mission-critical service such as this usually does.
Another transport organisation in Sydney (who I cannot name) has fantastic backups - radio backups to keep crucial areas live in case the Telstra links go down, and then a DR site so if the main control room is evacuated they can remotely switch to the DR site and be operational (using other staff already on site for other duties) within minutes (then the main staff can travel about 20 minutes to the DR site if the evac/outage will last). Loss of radio comms generally won't jeapordise passenger safety for these guys, but with aircraft, ATC provides positive separation and traffic information, so it's absolutely critical. Yes, I hear you say there is TCAS, but that is really a last resort.
It seems all the non-aerodrome transmitters (eg. Approach, Director, Departures, Centre, etc) are duplicated at secondary sites, but not the aerodrome control positions. Hence the requirement for CTAF when the Tower was unavailable, with very limited traffic (as well as inbound only). It would be expensive and potentially complex to duplicate the required aerodrome functions (radar, ADS-B, comms, etc) and still there would be limited or no visual (which is important when controlling TWR and GND), depending on the chosen site. Would be interesting to be a fly on the wall in the incident reviews...
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That's what I meant when I said it could be expensive and potentially complex to implement but in reality the Airlines (and pax) combined financial losses from the outage last week would have been more than what it would cost to do a DR site. Everything is run over IP these days.
LOL, not in the world of ATC or Aerodrome ops! Aldis lamp via IP anyone?
IP based systems are not anymore reliable, just look at Aerodata and any of the recent GDS outages and the effect they have had on ops. DR is already in place with ATC, but it only goes so far, anything more just does not make financial sense.
IP based systems are not anymore reliable, just look at Aerodata and any of the recent GDS outages and the effect they have had on ops. DR is already in place with ATC, but it only goes so far, anything more just does not make financial sense.
Last edited by markis10; 1st Apr 2019 at 21:11.
