IAA opens new control tower at Cork Airport
The Irish Aviation Authority has brought a new control tower on line at Cork Airport. At one minute past midnight on Tuesday October 20 operations commenced from the new facility which cost €7.5m to complete. In total, 27 staff were involved in the move including Controllers , technical and support staff. The IAA say that the main driver for embarking on the project was the necessary integration of Cork's ATM (Air Traffic Management) sytem with those at Shannon and Dublin Airports. Re-equipping the old tower was not a realistic option since there would have been interruptions to service at the airport. In addition the building would have required costly refurbishment. With these in mind the decision was made to build a new facility which is located on the western side of the airport. Construction began in August 2007 and took ten months to complete with fit out and validation taking until October 2009. Live testing began in early October, leading to dual operations and final transition last week. The project was completed on time, within budget and was funded entirely by the IAA without recourse to exchequer finance.