Staying at the Airport Hotel – Budapest
On 30/08/2010, in On the go..., by admin
For long drives, nothing beats the Grand Voyager
Our latest business opportunities call for an increasing amount of travel, among them to Budapest, Hungary. Budapest is special in more ways than one, including the fact that it is my birth city and coming back even if for a short time is always a pleasure. Last week’s trip was a combined business/holiday affair and we drove “home” in the company Chrysler Grand Voyager. You may look on that car with a disapproving eye from an environmental point of view but in terms of comfort and the ease when you need to haul people and gear, it has no equal in its category.It was of course only natural that we should be staying at the Airport Hotel near Ferihegy. BluSky Services, my company, has a corporate arrangement with the hotel and so we get a great rate but even if you have to pay the normal price, you get excellent value for your money.
It was very late evening when I pulled into their spacious parking lot which has slots also for cars hauling a caravan or which are themselves longer than your usual passenger vehicle. Plenty of parking space there so you will never end up having to find a slot on the street even in the busiest months.
A welcome sight after the long drive...
Our room was also spacious and well appointed and there was no problem at all with finding space for our gear. The beds were very inviting but I know from experience that after having driven 13 hours it is best to take some time to relax before trying to sleep. We were also hungry so we went down to the restaurant that is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. No matter how late or how early you walk in there, a friendly crew and a full menu card awaits you. The kitchen is a nice combination of international and Hungarian and the food is excellent. Not at all the kind of characterless stuff so many hotels offer you at exorbitant prices. The Airport Hotel in Budapest serves you great food at moderate prices any hour of the day or night.
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Who shall be boss?
On 29/07/2010, in Tower chronicles, by lajos
The story started back in 2009, on 20 April to be exact. As you will see the dates are important, this is why I am trying to remember them exactly. It was on this date that I completed the usual yearly proficiency test and I was so pleased with my 92 % result it never entered my mind that it would some day prove inadequate. In any case, it is only normal that a tower supervisor should achieve at least 90 %, so I was satisfied with myself. You must know about this proficiency test that a simple ground-pounder has 50 questions to answer while a supervisor gets 60… One thing was sure, I could continue to work as SV. (Supervisor or SV in Budapest is the deputy boss of a given shift. DSV or Duty Supervisor is the boss of the shift – Ed.)
A while later on a quiet, December day shift an old student of mine (who is now the boss of the training section but to keep his ATC license he works a certain number of hours in the tower) turned to me and said:
- Lajos, the time has come, here is your chance to become DSV!
- What gives? – I asked emerging from the Supervisor station.
- TC is retiring next year and the bidding is open for his position. Are you interested? – my ex-student asked loud enough for the others to also start listening.
- Rex Lajos, what will become of us without you? Who will they send to torture us? – came the chorus of the colleagues.
- I have no clue. This is the first time I have heard of this. I will think about it. – I replied and returned to the SV station to finish whatever I had been doing in the first place.
But the bug had been planted in my ear. I was thinking, this would be the same group I originally became an SV in… the group where they had that great sphere of companionship, the group that was on good terms even with the colleagues from approach control. True, only two people remained from the original crew but I knew also the young people, if nothing else I met them during their training period.
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Station calling – Visiting the Budapest Airport Hotel, your home away from home
On 23/05/2010, in Station calling, by steve
Hotels serving airports tend to be either dreary or expensive or both and all too often they do not much care about their guests who are in transit and are unlikely to become regulars anyway. One can find good examples of how it can and should be done at the several hotels around Brussels airport and we have now found one that really excels 5 minutes from Budapest Ferihegy airport.
Welcome to the Airport Hotel Budapest.
Jump on their shuttle bus (which you can even pre-order to meet your flight) and you will be taken through an industrial park still being developed near the airport and passing by Hungarian low fare airline Wizzair’s headquarters, you arrive at the hotel after a ride of about five minutes.
The house opened in July 2008 and it looks brand new inside and out. The surroundings could do with a bit of landscaping but that will surely come. Inside you enter a pleasantly appointed, atrium-style lobby with the front desk facing the restaurant. Off to the left is a nice little cafeteria.
Even if you only stay for one night, the restaurant will play an important role in your sojourn. First of all, it is open 24 hours a day! No matter how late you arrive or how early you rise because of jet-lag, a tasty meal is available at all hours of the day and the night. How many big name hotels can boast this kind of service?
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The tower with a soul… 12
On 27/04/2010, in The tower with a soul, by lajos
From shared lunches to more restrictions
As the years passed and we approached the tenth anniversary of being on the job, contact with other colleagues of my age group tapered off. Some of them went to other shifts or even other control units and this did not help of course. But on the few occasions we met, talk was no longer about girls or the pub but our respective aptitude in using Pampers properly. In other words, each of us was busy building a family and this left little time for anything else. Folks in the same shift tended to stick together though and common programs only strengthened this unity. For example (and this was back in the times before the political changes took place) we were members of a so called “brigade”. Sometimes we attended the May Day parade together but the common outings and excursions were the most memorable. One of the most successful trips was to Ocseny. Eight of us crammed into two small Polski Fiat’s, no mean feat! An old friend, VK welcomed us at the Ocseny airport where after we took turns to fly in a small plane above the Gemenc forest. After
each of us consuming a huge portion of “marhaporkolt” (beef prepared in a not quite goulash mode) and some excellent wine from the Szekszard region, it was even more difficult to get into the little cars… but we made it home safely.
On another occasion we were helping at the building site of one of our colleagues. Back then people built their own houses with help from friends. We got immersed in shifting bricks so much that we clean forgot that the group, in its totality, was due for night shift. In the end we reported two hours late and inserted the plugs of our headsets to the loud and forceful cursing of the day crew finally released to go home.
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A tower with a soul…11
On 12/04/2010, in The tower with a soul, by lajos
Small planes, small airports
The change of political system in Hungary was the main driver behind the presence of an increasing number of small aircraft, more and more people chose this way to visit the country. Since there was only one international airport, Ferihegy in Budapest, every plane had to land there to complete the immigration and customs formalities before being allowed to fly to their actual destination. The Air Traffic and Airport Administration (LRI), recognizing the possibilities, soon established air traffic services at the small Balaton Kiliti airport near Siofok, the capital of the Balaton Lake district. We started receiving planes there from the fall of 1989. At first our traffic consisted only of the foreign planes flying over from Budapest and the few planes in Hungarian ownership. This meant just a few planes a day and we were seriously bored most of the time. We spent the hours from opening to closing of the airport in a small wooden barrack and the only excitement was provided by the police helicopters which came to visit occasionally.
Scarce traffic or not, this new life around small aircraft had a charm and novelty for us. Working at the big Ferihegy airport we talked to the pilots only via the radio, at Balaton Kiliti we got to meet them in person. A whole new world opened for us and I for one liked this direct contact very much. I might say it was a much better feeling being able to go out to the plane and do a bit of hell-raising if the pilot did something silly. At Ferihegy this was impossible, everything happened in a much more regimented manner.
Balaton Kility from the air with Lake Balaton in the background
Yes I liked this rural life and was among the first who applied also for the 1990 season. By May of that year, LRI had a kind of terminal built at Kiliti for an exorbitant price. Since they never bothered to consult us, this new building turned out to be of doubtful value. The tower cab on the top was a hothouse in the summer and by midday everyone had to escape or risk a heat stroke. We soon gave up experimenting with that thing and simply stayed downstairs, working from what was meant to be the reserve radio room. It had a terrace and we talked to the planes from there. The building also housed our living quarters, so for four days at a stretch we usually did not set foot in the outside world. This was both good and bad. Tired by evening, we usually stayed put when in fact a bit of night swimming in the lake would have been a good thing.
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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.
Should MALEV be saved?
On 01/12/2009, in Airline corner, by cleo
Do you remember the term “flag-carrier”? This was usually applied to the airline of a country which was seen as the object of national pride. As recently as a decade ago, when new States came into being, no matter how small, one of their first acts had been to create a national airline (often followed by an air traffic control centre… but that is another story). Of course the aviation marketplace has changed in a big way, there is intense competition between companies, and being a flag-carrier has all but lost its patina.
Airlines have disappeared from the scene, some are gone completely (SABENA) others live on wearing the guise of companies that took them over (Northwest) and still others have kept their colors and name but are now just a division in a mega-carrier (Austrian and Brussels Airlines in Lufthansa, KLM in Air France). Most of them had one thing in common: their long (and not so long) term prospects were all but rosy. Surviving on national pride was not an option.
The problem with Malev is that many in Hungary want to save it because they believe that a country must have a national airline. They also claim that a country’s independence is reduced if it does not have its own airline. These are the worst possible reason for trying to save an ailing company and it costs a lot of taxpayer money before the company folds anyway.
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Anniversary – First radar system deployed at Budapest-Ferihegy airport
On 06/10/2009, in Anniversaries, by steve
50 year anniversary on 6 May 2009
Those who visit Budapest Ferihegy airport these days see a very different facility from what it had been in 1959. If arriving on one of the low fare carriers, you do pass through the original terminal (Terminal 1) but it has changed quite a bit even though an effort was made to preserve the original at least on the inside.
But 1959 was a significant year mainly for air traffic control. On 6 May a radar system was commissioned, the first ever in Hungary used for civilian traffic.
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A short left turn
On 01/09/2009, in Flashback, by steve
The arrival of Lufthansa’s shiny new Boeing 727 in Budapest was an event in itself. The flight from Frankfurt was almost always on time, the 727 looking like it had come from Boeing’s delivery centre the day before… We learnt early that she could climb and descend like no other jet serving Budapest and as such she was every controller’s best friend.
Photo Rafael Klöpper
Although one did not play favorites with any airline, it was hard to refuse when an LH skipper asked for a particular runway or other small “favor” pilots sometimes requested. After several months of uneventful operation one morning we noticed that the return flight plan was filed to Belgrade rather than Frankfurt. So what gives?
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