The tower with a soul… 8
On 09/03/2010, in The tower with a soul, by lajos
Airport – the book and the real thing
In order for you to understand this part, we need to go back to the early days, when the tower was commissioned… We have to look back to those days because that is where the never ending problems have started. What follows here is conjecture on my part, but as they say, where there is smoke, there is fire…
In 1983, the year the tower started in live operations, we only had two television channels, both broadcasting in Hungarian. Under the regime then in power, movies from the West arrived on the “good” side of the iron curtain with a delay of several years. This was the reason why the film Airport made in 1970 from Arthur Hailey’s hit novel, was shown on Hungarian television 13 years after its premier, in 1983. This had far reaching consequences for us in the tower…
With there not being much of a choice, half the country was glued to the tube watching how the good folk of Lincoln went to protest aircraft noise, in spite of the heavy snow. Many of those who saw the film felt immediate sympathy with the Lincoln protesters. Before that movie I had never seen anyone protesting aircraft noise in Hungary, not even at places like Tokol where Mig-21 jet fighters blasted over their heads almost every minute. Call it a coincidence, but after hand-over of the new runway, people living around Ferihegy airport started protesting in much the same way they saw it in the movie. Why couldn’t Arthur Hailey write about ants or the underground instead of airports? The consequence was that take-offs from 31R and landings on 13L were immediately restricted. In other words, we lost an approach direction even before we started using it.
The tower with a soul… 7
On 22/02/2010, in The tower with a soul, by lajos
The great escape and some unintended consequences
With the future of the tower work no longer being really promising, a lot of the younger guys “escaped”, some of them going all the way to Canada! When three of them left within weeks of each other, we had no other choice but to reorganize the shifts so that each still had the required complement of bodies. I had to move to another shift, the first such move which was followed by no fewer than ten shift changes in the following 25 years.
I spent three years in the original shift when the orders came to move. This meant saying good-bye to my friend Geza with whom we weathered the difficulties of the first few years. It also meant starting in a new group composed of people I had never met before. But I tried to look at the bright side of things: new group, new people, new customs, things that can actually make such a change exciting in everyday practice. And excitement there was aplenty. I saw the sour faces of the others who were also forced to change shifts and this made me even more determined not to make the same mistake. In the end I found myself settling in quite well into what was then Shift B. I was glad to see that there were also humans in that group and even while the days passed with a bit less merriment than before, it wasn’t so bad at all.
As it turned out, my settling in was even more successful than I realized… I met my future wife in Shift B. She was a Flight Data Assistant in the Approach Control Unit. I will not dwell too long on this part of the story, let me juts say that I experienced first-hand the wisdom of the saying: don’t ever hunt domestic rabbits. The only joyful outcome of that particular exercise is my daughter who is now 22 and with whom we continue to have a very close father-daughter relationship.
Everyone and no one in charge
The tower with a soul… 6
On 15/02/2010, in The tower with a soul, by lajos
A ship without a skipper
The first two-three years in the life of the new tower passed in the fever of newness and building experience. For us newbie’s everything was new by definition but even the older colleagues had to get used to the numerous new taxiways and the methods of using two runways. But everyone was enthusiastic about their work. Even the approach controllers who were attached to us for a few months at a stretch seemed to enjoy themselves. They discovered in short order that there was work to be done even in the tower and aerodrome controllers did more than just sit around the place. Slowly, very slowly a vision for a possible future started to take shape in which we saw ourselves as approach controllers coming out to the tower for regular rotations as a matter of course… What a nice dream this was!
When SG left, the dream went with him. As a young guy I had no idea why he opted to go back and once again work as a simple approach controller. I assumed the tasks and problems to be solved were simply too much for him and his health was also less than perfect, more then enough reasons for not wanting to stay as the tower boss.
His departure was a watershed event and it marked the start of the darkest period in the history of the tower. We were cast adrift, without leadership and things took a direction that was anything but European. There was nobody left to represent our interests unless you count the few division chiefs stationed in the main building who did occasionally show their faces in the tower to enquire how things were. But there was no point in telling them about our problems. By the time they negotiated the 6 kilometer distance back to their offices, they had forgotten everything we said. Once back behind their desks, they were immediately issued some kind of top priority matter to solve and so our petty problems always ended up falling by the wayside.
The tower with a soul… 5
On 10/02/2010, in The tower with a soul, by lajos
Flying over the cuckoo’s nest
A really cute novelty was the cuckoo act. This was the art of working during the night shift while being in deep sleep at the same time. I did not have much of a need to spend whole nights wide awake before coming to ATC… I mean, even in the military when doing duty in a guard tower I was able to nap a little (my gosh, I have just divulged a military secret).
The system worked like this. At around 11 p.m., most of the people on duty would depart for the rest areas with only two persons, the cuckoos, staying in the tower cab. In those days almost all traffic was gone before 11 p.m., so two controllers were more than enough to keep their eye on things until 0600 in the morning. The two guys were designated cuckoo one and cuckoo two. Number one was expected to be awake and available at an instant’s notice while number two was the back-up. In theory. In practice things sometimes worked out very differently, as we will see later.
The tower with a soul… 4
On 29/01/2010, in The tower with a soul, by lajos
Wrestling with the “furniture”
The huge control panel for the various ground lights, like the taxiway lighting, was next to the ground controller’s console. The control
panel was teeming with various switches used to turn various sections of taxiway lights on and off. The panel was variously nicknamed Christmas tree and railway shunting-yard. The multitude of small LED’s presented an impressive picture when night fell. There was only one problem with this panel, and also the panel used to switch the runway lights… you could operate the switches only through a very specific movement of your hand, something that needed to be learned separately. Not infrequently, the first attempt had to be followed by a second one… For some colleagues the frustration was too much with the result that we had to call the maintenance crew to restore certain broken parts…
The tower with a soul… 3
On 18/01/2010, in The tower with a soul, by lajos
In memoriam…
Luckily, this subject can be kept short. Our tower is only 25 years old so most of us have not yet had the time to get old… Unexpected tragedies have also mercifully spared the tower crew with the only exception being KG, who left us prematurely. But he made his name originally as an area controller and was active in the tower only for the last few months of his career.
Our colleagues of the met office one floor down did not fare so well… In the 25 years we are talking about, several of their colleagues flew west
into the sunset. The first to go was Guszti, I can’t recall his full name any more. He was of Bulgarian origin but spoke Hungarian without an accent. He was a relaxed, quiet chap with a ready smile and he came up to the tower cab regularly to chat up on things. He was the last person you would expect to have a stroke.
Two decades later, two met guys transferred to the heavenly observation post almost at the same time. UZ was only a little older than me and he too had been in the tower right from the start. He was a section chief when the note came that his time was up. Though he never complained, it was evident that he went through great suffering before finally being released from duty in this world. Just a few months later KJ left us so suddenly, we all shivered at the news. He was my age and he was a guy who worked out regularly. He actually died while exercising…
Sanyika's original vehicle
I left the story of Sanyika to the last, not because it is less important but because it is so extraordinary. Sanyika was the permanent driver of the van allocated to the tower. He was a very interesting character, it was impossible not to like him. It was his duty to transport us all over the airport, from the personnel entrance to the tower, from the tower to the company restaurant and to the offices in Terminal 1. He drove some 300 km per day, the Barkas van sort of becoming part of his body in the process. He was not at all offended when we started calling him our Centaur, part Barkas, part Sanyika… Well, Sanyika the upper part, Barkas the lower… you get the picture. In time, the old Barkas was replaced by a Ford minibus and the “operation” left Sanyika thoroughly unhappy. It just did not feel the same! And here comes the incredible part. Not much later, he passed away while waiting in the minibus. He died as he had lived… an inseparable part of our airport.
May peace be with you my dear friends, we will always remember you.
To be continued…
The tower with a soul… 2
On 11/01/2010, in The tower with a soul, by lajos
Envy and other incomprehensible things
We were off to a turbulent start when the “old-timers” discovered that our starting salaries were the same as the salary of a controller after one year… we were certainly not to blame for this disparity but took all the flack nevertheless. Some of the more senior colleagues from the approach control unit had a few axes to grind also… it took a few years for me to find out why.
Flack or axes, we loved the tower work. There were four teams and I was in Team C, together with my friend ZG. This was a good arrangement, it was easier to make time pass together and we made fun out of just about everything. There were things most controllers hated to do. Like for instance having the flight progress strips torn off and inserted in their holders.
This had to be done the night before the strips would be used and the complement was for the whole day (we did not have just in time strip printing back then). So we started the night shift with attending to the strips while the “big” guys worked. Why they hated doing this so much was a mystery but for us it was a perfect opportunity for a fun competition. Who was the fastest at tearing the strips and inserting them individually into the holders? We timed everyone and we had everything from individual records to world records… Another activity apparently below the dignity of more senior colleagues was exchanging the soda bottles. The tower was supplied with a few crates of sparkling water and the empty bottles had to be taken to the terminal where they were exchanged for filled ones. This “catering” duty was just one more occasion to have some extra fun, for us anyway. Some colleagues back then would not be seen dead with one of those crates. Why I could never understand.
The tower with a soul… 1
On 05/01/2010, in The tower with a soul, by lajos
Preface
The "new" Ferihegy tower
Having held an Aerodrome Control rating in my ATC license and having actually worked as an aerodrome controller, I have this “thing” for the most spectacular air traffic services unit of them all, the Aerodrome Control Tower. Not only is their role vital in running airports efficiently, they are also for the most part magnificent architecture objects, lending their beauty to the whole of the airport they serve.
A particular tower in Europe is even closer to my heart than the rest. Although I started my career in the old tower at Budapest Ferihegy airport and never actually worked in the new one, I did contribute to the airport expansion project which included construction of the new tower as you see it to-day.
Reading the above, you will not be surprised to learn that it was no accident that Ferihegy Tower was the second in our series on the towers of the world. Why not the first? That is another story I might tell you in the future…
What you are reading here is a new series, based on informal chats I had with Lajos Molnar, an aerodrome controller who, unlike me, has been there in the tower at Ferihegy from day one. We talked about many things but the focus was always the tower… its people, its soul, its essence that makes it special for those who work there.
This is the story of a tower with a soul as told by Lajos Molnar who has been touched by that soul and whose soul is part of that tower.
New series on Roger-Wilco. The tower with a soul…
On 31/12/2009, in The tower with a soul, by steve
If you enjoyed reading the sometimes incredible stories in Same Time, Same Place, Same Level…, keep your seatbelts fastened! The last part of Same Time having just been published, we are bringing you a new series under the title: The tower with a soul. This will be the story of the first 25 years in the life of the new control tower at Budapest Ferihegy airport.
Presented in several chapters covering the professional as well as the human interest aspects that characterized the first 25 years of the new tower, the series is not trying to be an official history of the edifice or the control unit it houses. It will be the picture as seen through the eyes of a controller who has been there right from the start. Factual, often moving, sometimes a tad subjective… but at all times a real life rendition of life in a tower with a soul.
Part 1 will be posted in the first week of January 2010.
