CARROLL MCCORMICK / MONTREAL
Approach controller recurrent training at Glasgow Prestwick International Airport, Scotland, will soon be carried out on a simulator. The airport is to take delivery of an Adacel two-position air traffic control radar simulator in late January just in time for a local area procedural redesign. "If the changes are approved, we will have massive changes in the approach and departure procedures," says Elliott Summers, Prestwick's senior air traffic controller officer.
The Aviation Research and Training Tools (ARTT) system, which can operate on a laptop computer, will give Prestwick an aid that will enable it to carry out familiarisation, emergency, upgrade and promotion assessment as well as recurrent training. "We train controllers specifically to our needs," says Summers. "The simulator will provide us with better-trained and equipped controllers for the working environment." Prestwick expects to need five more controllers in the next five years. As well as permitting new airspace and procedures training, the simulator will also enable training to be carried out at high traffic levels when actual traffic is low. The airport says traffic will almost double by 2004. The simulator can replicate current and future expected operational conditions, says Summers, including military aircraft that pop up unannounced on radar screens, and radar returns from "anything that moves", including ferries and wind farm generators.
The scalable ARTT system includes multi-sector functionality,e lectronic flight progress strips, networking capability, voice recognition and speech synthesis and automatic or manual pseudo pilot. Airspace, content and scenario generation is easier than in recent systems, says Summers.
Source: Flight International