What is a digital tower?

Picture a normal control tower: a glass room high above the airport. Controllers inside watch every aircraft and tell pilots when they can land, take off or cross a runway. A digital tower keeps the controllers and the job. It replaces the window.

How it works

1. Cameras film the airport. A mast holds day and night cameras, plus infrared or thermal cameras that see heat. FAA
2. The video travels to a control room. It goes over a secure network, sometimes to a room hundreds of kilometers away.
3. Controllers work from screens. A wall of screens shows the whole airport. They can zoom in, and aircraft can be labeled. They talk to pilots by radio, the same as always.
4. One room can serve more than one airport. Quiet airports can share one team instead of each needing its own building.

Why airports want it

• Cost. A new tower building is expensive. A camera mast and a shared room can cost less.
• Service where there was none. Small airports that could never staff a tower can get air traffic service.
• Longer hours. A shared centre can cover an airport at times it would otherwise close.
• Better eyes. Infrared and zoom help at night and in poor visibility.

What people worry about

• What happens if cameras or the network fail.
• Whether screens show enough compared with a real window.
• How to prove it is safe before it handles real traffic.
• How the job and training change for controllers.

These are real questions. Regulators answer them through testing and safety cases, and each country moves at its own pace.

A short history

• 2015. Örnsköldsvik, Sweden, begins full-time remote operation. Tower page
• 2021. London City is controlled from the NATS centre at Swanwick, about 115 km away. Tower page
• Today. Avinor lists its Bodø centre in Norway as serving 14 airports. Avinor
• 2 September 2026. FAA guidance says the FAA granted a design approval, with conditions, to Frequentis USA. That is not approval to run live traffic. US tracker

Remote tower or digital tower?

People use both words. A remote tower means the controllers are somewhere other than the airport. A digital tower means the view comes from cameras and screens, wherever the controllers sit. Every remote tower is digital; not every digital tower is remote. The FAA now uses "digital tower" in its guidance.

The biggest remote tower centres

Centres linked to the most airports in public sources:

• Bodø Remote Towers Centre, Norway: 21 airports
• Fintraffic Remote Tower Centre Vantaa, Finland: 7 airports
• LFV Remote Tower Centre Sundsvall, Sweden: 5 airports
• LFV Remote Tower Centre Stockholm, Sweden: 4 airports
• EANS Remote Tower Centre Tallinn, Estonia: 4 airports
• DFS Remote Tower Control Center Leipzig, Germany: 3 airports

See the tower workstation for what is on a controller's desk, and the remote towers market for who builds and buys them.

Words you will see

• Air traffic control (ATC). People who keep aircraft safely apart and tell pilots when and where they can go.
• Remote tower. Cameras and sensors at the airport, controllers somewhere else. Örnsköldsvik in Sweden began full-time remote operation in April 2015.
• Remote tower centre. The room the controllers work in. One centre can serve several airports. Avinor lists its Bodø centre in Norway as serving 14.
• Digital tower. The same camera and screen technology, with or without a remote room. FAA guidance now says digital tower for what it used to call remote towers.
• Hybrid tower. Controllers keep the real window and add camera video, as planned at Manchester and Farnborough. It is not a remote tower.
• Contingency facility. A backup room for when the main tower cannot be used, such as the Heathrow facility unveiled in 2009.
• ICAO code. The four-letter code pilots and controllers use for an airport, like EGLC for London City. ICAO is the United Nations agency for flying.
• Provider (ANSP). Air navigation service provider: the organization that runs air traffic control in a country, like NATS in the UK or Avinor in Norway.
• Vendor. The company that builds the system: cameras, screens, software and networks.
• Regulator. The government body that decides what is allowed, like the FAA in the United States or EASA in Europe.
• Design approval. A regulator says a system's design meets its requirements. It is not permission to run live traffic.
• AIP. The FAA's Airport Improvement Program, which gives grants to airports. A program guidance letter (PGL) explains how the money can be used.
• Contract tower. A US tower staffed by a private company working for the FAA, instead of by FAA employees.
• AFIS. Aerodrome flight information service. An officer gives pilots information, not instructions. It is not air traffic control.
• ED-240A. The European standard (from EUROCAE) for how well remote tower camera systems must perform.

Standards

In Europe, EUROCAE ED-240A sets minimum performance standards for remote tower camera systems. In the United States the FAA publishes a concept of operations, a safety assessment, visual requirements and draft technical requirements, and tests designs at its Technical Center. See the library and the US tracker.

What this site does not say

It does not say any system is safe or approved for a particular use, and it is not operational information. Status and dates come from the linked public sources and carry a confidence label.