Ground control out, remote control in at London City Airport

At London City Airport, the air traffic controllers have gone. Rising over the terminal building, the old control tower with its panoramic windows is deserted, with screens, a few pens and some hand sanitiser all that remains.

City quietly switched to a remote, digital air traffic control centre earlier this year, the first major international airport to do so, and on Friday it went public with the news.

The point is to improve efficiency and allow for smooth future expansion because the same number of controllers can deal with a larger number of plane movements thanks to new technology that provides them with more data than before.