Without a control tower, Sydney’s new airport will die hard in the hearts of travellers

I’d hate to appear controlling, but I have a grievance I’d like to air. News of the decision that Australia’s newest international airport will not include a traditional control tower has hit travellers, like me, as hard as an outbreak of sudden and unexpected turbulence.

Instead, it was announced this week by Airservices Australia, the body responsible for Australia’s airspace management, that air traffic for the $11 billion new airport will be overseen by “airspace controllers”, housed in some kind of grim-sounding, data-driven bunker which – get this – will be located 20 kilometres from the airport.

So the complex, round-the-clock aircraft arrivals and departures will be tracked, not from the signature slanted windows of a landmark tower, such as the one with the durian-like top that frames the view as you arrive by road at Singapore’s legendary Changi Airport, but via a bank of 20 remote-control cameras atop a 45-metre-high mast. Every “camera detection” will then be projected onto screens at the Digitised Aerodrome Service (DAS) centre at Eastern Creek.

This is sad if not alarming news for plane-spotters, airport passengers and control-tower tragics such as me. A major airport devoid of a control tower is like a cathedral denied a spire. Without one, the new Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport, 44 kilometres from the CBD, and expected to open in just two years, risks becoming some kind of second-rate aeronautical Westfield.

Control towers add a note of excitement, much needed these days. Around the world, modern-day airport terminals increasingly look like glorified shopping centres-cum-food courts with a bit of security and passport control as a side serving.

Rising confidently above busy runways, control towers are reassuring beacons of hope for passengers, especially nervy ones, and surely for pilots, too, confirming that someone immensely qualified and responsible is fully watching out for, and over, you.

These venerable structures stand tall as one of the last links to the romance of air travel. They can also make for striking architectural statements that help provide otherwise bland airports with some sort of visual identity.

The acclaimed Australian architect Ken Woolley designed the control tower at the existing Sydney International Airport at Mascot, and remains one of the finest and imaginative examples of what can be achieved with such an otherwise utilitarian erection.