Thales extends TopSky-ATC with Remote Tower and signs partnerships with HungaroControl and Searidge Technologies

Thales unveils its remote tower offering, an extension of TopSky-ATC, its market-leading automation system.
Thales’s remote tower offering provides increased situational awareness through a combination of sensors and cameras, enabling remote air traffic management at a reduced cost, without an impact to safety or availability.

The offering is specifically designed for the provision of services to locations that were not previously economically viable, such as low volume airports, long periods of low traffic levels such as nighttime operations or airports with high seasonality impact. It can also be deployed for dangerous or unpopular sites like active military theatres. The offering is also perfectly suited as a business continuity and disaster contingency support in case the primary tower suffers a catastrophic failure, and where the ability to support increased operations while maintaining existing staff levels is desirable.
 
TopSky-ATC which the offering extends from, is the most widely-deployed and flexible ATC automation system in the world with 140 air traffic control centres supporting tower, approach, en route and oceanic services.  Many TopSky-ATC customers already leverage its embedded remote centre capability in order to deploy remote approach control or tower systems because they use the same core processing, data and tools. The capability to support remote tower applications is a natural and easy progression of this system. 

Thales also announces partnership agreements with HungaroControl and Searidge Technologies for near-term opportunities as well as collaborative development of more sophisticated remote tower concepts. Thales brings its portfolio of air traffic management technologies and system integration expertise to this partnership.

HungaroControl, a long-standing Thales customer and innovative air navigation service provider for Hungary, is a forerunner in developing and implementing new value-generating operational concepts. Searidge Technologies is a technology innovator, offering a field-proven video-based technology platform and extensive experience improving visibility on some of the world’s largest airport surfaces.

“Our collaboration with HungaroControl and Searidge is based upon a shared, compelling vision for robust and flexible remote tower operations that can be deployed quickly and cost effectively.”  
said Todd Donovan, Vice President, Strategy & Marketing, Thales Air Traffic Management

“This partnership brings market-leading technologies and experience together to deliver a unique and competitive Remote Tower offering to the market.  Together, we are well positioned to help Thales customers take their remote tower from concept through to successful deployment and certification.” said Moodie Cheikh, CEO, Searidge Technologies

“The development and deployment of remote towers is yet another way HungaroControl will deliver benefits to its users. Partnering with Thales and Searidge accelerates these benefits for Hungarian airspace users and allows us to share our expertise with other ANSPs.” said Dezső Dudás, Head of Strategy and Project Management, HungaroControl

“Our customers want flexibility in their air traffic control systems – not just the ability to extend their ATC systems into the tower, but also the ability to perform tower operations from the ATC centre. Starting today, our TopSky-ATC customers can seamlessly deploy remote tower operations for significant operational savings without sacrificing safety or operational availability.” said Jean-Marc Alias, Thales Vice President in charge of ATM Business