“Airports provide significant indirect employment in local communities, and the same can be said for ATC towers. This includes indirect jobs providing maintenance and services to the tower, from engineering to cleaning, all will be affected by this decision. Scotland is not the first nation to implement remote towers in remote communities. (…) In the UK, there is only one tower now operated remotely, and that is in London City airport, located in the middle of one of the largest cities in Europe. It is operated from one of the largest ATM operations centers in Europe in Swanwick, and all the infrastructure associated with both the location of the airport, and the controllers, provides a certain level of institutional support. (…) Given the infancy of the technology, we find it difficult to assure these communities that that service can be provided in the event of bad weather, infrastructural damage, or cyber-attack,” Spera stated.
In the letter addressed to the Minister for Transport in Scotland, the ETF expresses its equal concerns regarding the downgrading of services at Benbecula and Wick airports. Based on the solid evidence from the ETF affiliates in Scotland, HIAL plans to downgrade the future functioning of these 2 airports to the level of an aerodrome flight information service, thus withdrawing their ability to issue instructions to arriving and departing aircraft.
ETF draws the attention of the Scottish government to the huge safety risks in implementing such a decision, reminding the authorities of the imperative need to maintain their current level of specialized air traffic services, due to the nature of both the airports and the traffic they currently serve, such as scheduled air services, ferry flights, and offshore helicopter operations, and the very specific weather conditions in this part of Europe.
هن يورپي ٽرانسپورٽ ورڪرز فيڊريشن (ETF) embraces transport trade unions from the European Union, the European Economic Area, and Central and Eastern Europe. The ETF represents more than 5 million transport workers from more than 200 transport unions and 41 European countries.
