London City Airport - Tower is now remoted 90 miles away

How has consolidation been working overall for SoCal TRACON, for example. When Los Angeles, Ontario, San Diego, and Coast TRACONs were all combined? Or NorCal TRACON when Monterey, Stockton, Sacramento and Bay TRACONs were combined. How have those been working out?
Not bad at all. Consolidating tracons is easy. The only thing that changes is where you’re sitting. Being in the same building doesn’t change how things operate from when you were 150 miles apart.
 
Not bad at all. Consolidating tracons is easy. The only thing that changes is where you’re sitting. Being in the same building doesn’t change how things operate from when you were 150 miles apart.

So taking those examples, would this kind of consolidation make sense for other metro-type areas with various TRACONs located not far from one another? Seems it could make sense for what they’re talking about here. Maybe even the northeast?
 
So taking those examples, would this kind of consolidation make sense for other metro-type areas with various TRACONs located not far from one another? Seems it could make sense for what they’re talking about here. Maybe even the northeast?

theres been talk I think back in the 90’s of doing a “super Tracon” combining N90/PHL/A90. The big issue is if something like what happened in Chicago Tracon a few years ago happens to that building. If you lose a few hundred square miles of airspace, you can work around it. The whole northeast corridor? That’s a world of hurt.

But PCT is a consolidation, Cape TRACON in MA just got moved into A90, I think a couple just got moved into Ypsilanti in Michigan
 
Diversification in location makes sense I would think. You have a natural disaster or some other wild event, and it would be easier to continue if tracons are scattered about vs in one location.
 
Diversification in location makes sense I would think. You have a natural disaster or some other wild event, and it would be easier to continue if tracons are scattered about vs in one location.

It does. It creates some significant infrastructure issues, too, but they're well-understood problems to solve.
 
Diversification in location makes sense I would think. You have a natural disaster or some other wild event, and it would be easier to continue if tracons are scattered about vs in one location.

Every few years it seems like there’s talk of combining a bunch of the centers together, because there’s no actual need for ZLA or ZOA to even be physically located in CA. Could move them all to Omaha and save a bunch of money on land haha. But then that guy set himself on fire at ZAU and most of those talks ended from what I know.

Also the FAA side has to hate these combined radar facilities. You have places that are all lumped in together getting paid at the highest traffic level in the building, even though some of these Areas in Centers and TRACONS would never be close to sniffing level 12 pay if they didn’t happen to be physically colocated with the controllers actually working the busy traffic.
 
even though some of these Areas in Centers and TRACONS would never be close to sniffing level 12 pay if they didn’t happen to be physically colocated with the controllers actually working the busy traffic.

i always wonder if I resent those controllers because I’m petty or because I’m jealous
 
i always wonder if I resent those controllers because I’m petty or because I’m jealous


Same haha. It doesn't help that the slow areas staffing are all way way better than the others, so they get more breaks, longer breaks, and don't work as hard when they are actually plugged in. They had 2 sectors open and 7 controllers on break, we had 6 sectors open and 1 on break last time I was at work haha. So i think im both petty AND jealous lol.
 
Same haha. It doesn't help that the slow areas staffing are all way way better than the others, so they get more breaks, longer breaks, and don't work as hard when they are actually plugged in. They had 2 sectors open and 7 controllers on break, we had 6 sectors open and 1 on break last time I was at work haha. So i think im both petty AND jealous lol.

nothing like going into the break room and seeing one of them sitting there and then they’re still there when your breaks over
 
apparenrlt there’s something like 13 or 15 consolidation projects in the planning. Kind of ironic when the whole reason of not doing that in the first place was so if something happened it didn’t take out too much airspace at once. Like imagine if the make a Northeast TRACON going from DC to Boston and then something like what happened in Chicago a few years ago happens? Hell, the whole reason thr ARTCC’s and TRACONs have to be a certain distance apart was to keep them apart from the same nuke blast.
does this not apply in Houston?
 
does this not apply in Houston?

I have no idea one way or the other. I don’t know anything Houston. If you’re talking about distance apart it’s like that for boston Tracon/center too, they’re like 12 miles down the road from eachother
 
Honestly you start tying these systems together with sensor fusing between visual sources like video/Flir and meta data from stuff like flightaware/ADSB tracks and then project it in a 3D environment, it’s hard to argue 2 guys in the tower are not the inferior option.


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We’re talking faa budget here not DOD budgets
 
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