During the past years, the number and scope of studies into the physical relocation of the air traffic control services providing by air traffic control towers has increased immensely. The following paper elucidates the motivation behind these studies. It will also describe and offer a qualitative assessment of the conceptual ideas on which the various studies have been based. Continuing and further developing on the previous work already conducted by Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH (DFS), it will derive and describe principles for the design of an airport traffic control centre and summarise the initial results of the earlier projects.