Remote tower center location and Turkey implementation

Due to the increasing population in the world, the demand for air transportation is increasing and air traffic is increasing day by day. When we look at the flight number data announced by Eurocontrol for Europe, between 2017 and 2018, 11,011,434 flights were reached, which is the highest value to date, with an increase of 3%. Turkey, is among the countries where air transportation is growing rapidly around the world. It has been observed that there has been a 93% increase in the number of commercial flights between 2009 and 2019 within the borders of the airspace with 59 civil and 18 military airports. Depending on the intensity of air traffic, the service level of air traffic control towers is increasing day by day and these services create new maintenance costs. While meeting these costs does not pose a problem for airports with a high number of passengers and flights, it can create a problem for airports with a low number of flights and passengers. In recent years, considering the cost factor, the concept of remote tower center has emerged in order to prevent the closure of airports with low number of flights and to increase profitability rates. Remote tower center is defined as the application that provides the control and routing activities of at least two airports with a remote center. In this study, it is aimed to develop a mathematical model in order to determine the best location selection of tower centers that will provide remote control of airports with low number of flights. In the proposed mathematical model, various parameters and constraints have been developed based on the Hub Location Problems. The developed model was coded with GAMS software and it was completed with CPLEX solver of GAMS software