Relative secrets
On 22/07/2010, in Flashback, by steve
I have an old book here, entitled “On the highways of the sky”. Published in the 60’s in Hungary and translated from the original East-German edition, it did reflect the spirit of the times but for me at age 13 or 14 it was the most wonderful book ever. It talked about all the fascinating things that were already pulling me towards a career in aviation.
There was a sentence in the book, advising air travelers to pack their cameras in the checked baggage. Of course… making photos from aircraft, even passenger aircraft, must have been anathema to the regimes in Eastern Europe back then. I remembered this sentence every time we flew and as a kid often wondered what the always polite and nice Malev cabin crew would have done had I kept my camera with me. On a flight with Aeroflot with a cabin crew perfectly capable of upsetting the balance of the aircraft had they congregated at the aft galley, I did not even wonder any more…
Several years later my dream came true and I started working at Ferihegy airport. Like all such places, Ferihegy too had its share of old stories and as the new boy in town, I was an avid listener whenever the old hands started to reminisce.
One story had a particular relevance to my earlier experience with the camera…
Click here to read the full article
New series on Roger-Wilco
On 16/06/2010, in Just to let you know..., by steve
Over the past several months you could enjoy a series of articles about the life of Budapest-Ferihegy tower, as seen through the eyes and I may add, heart of an air traffic controller who has been working there from the very beginning. “The tower with a soul”, as the series was called, was huge hit with lots of readers for each installment.
Having traced the events of the past, Roger-Wilco will be bringing you stories from the present by the same author, our contributor Lajos, who has decided to chronicle the towers life in real time. His stories, well what did you expect, will once again go deeper than the practice of air traffic control, revealing the humans occupying the lofty heights of the tower with all their qualities and failings.
Stay tuned!
The tower with a soul… 15.
On 21/05/2010, in The tower with a soul, by lajos
Exciting times and more progress
The first decade after the change of the political system in Hungary brought home the realization that Hungarians had a peculiar interpretation of democracy. Instead of making use of opportunities, they immediately started abusing them. They interpreted freedom as being a license to do anything with laws being just a necessary evil which one did not have to observe but rather find cracks to avoid them. Slowly but surely the country slipped into a chaotic state and Ferihegy airport was no different.
Each of the specialized services gained a lot of independence and they started to issue their own rules and procedures, most of which were of course in contradiction with what the others were doing. This was the reason why the tower also had to start negotiations with the other services and to develop common positions and provisions. Obviously, this was far too much work for a single tower boss and so the Aerodrome Control Centre was established under the leadership of SP. This unit incorporated the tower division, the met observer division and the engineering division. The tower division had its own boss in the person of GC. So it was SP and GC who started the negotiations at the end of 2000 with the other services, including the ramp and the airport coordination service.
Click here to read the full article
The tower with a soul… 14.
On 11/05/2010, in The tower with a soul, by lajos
Finally, real progress
For this chapter I had to solicit a bit of outside help. It looked like I too remembered old memories better than recent ones. Misi Kurucz was kind enough to help me by sketching the most important events in the life of the tower that came to pass during his tenure as tower chief. My heartfelt gratitude goes to him for this.
Misi was appointed tower chief in 1997. He took the room once occupied by professor SGY and set out alone (!) to fight an uphill battle. It was clear even then that getting all the red-tape done would not be an easy task. He could count on the tower shift supervisors but in turn he had to wrestle with his management to force a bit of progress. That his efforts were not in vain is amply demonstrated by the tower cabin as it is now. A lot of things had to be changed and modernized so that we may work in a more up-to-date environment. The renovations brought months of noise and dirt so our life was not easy either. But we survived and so did the aircraft we handled during this difficult period and work in the new cabin was much more pleasant. For example, the consoles were lowered so we had a much better view of the field. We got new, flat panel monitors on which we could follow traffic much better. When the image processing of the ground control radar was digitized, all movements on the airport became easily visible. For example, at the tower control position both runways were shown simultaneously on two separate images.
Click here to read the full article
The tower with a soul… 13
On 06/05/2010, in The tower with a soul, by lajos
Ten years on the job
The old approach unit...
Ten years on the job! I can say that the first ten years passed quickly but on occasion time seemed to be crawling. Under the previous protocols, someone with a 10 year old license would have already made it to approach control. I read somewhere not so long ago that hires in the “beat generation” in the 60s and 70s became tower controllers almost off the street and approach controllers after a mere five years. This was considered normal back then. Work in the old tower coupled to low traffic did not demand a lot of professional skill. In that system it was logical to have the beginners start in the tower and then get promoted to approach control.
Things changed with the new tower, after all, the area of the airport increased threefold with all that this entailed. Traffic had to be organized across many more taxiways and operating two runways also required more concentration and experience. This was also the reason why it looked like a good idea for the approach controllers to come out to the tower one by one for a stint of a few months. As I mentioned before, this idyllic state of affairs did not last long and the old practice of promoting tower controllers with the most experience to become approach controllers with no reverse flow of any kind continued. Unfortunately the tower complement did not get new hires either so our numbers shrunk while those of the approach unit swelled. This meant of course that after a time we could no longer be “promoted” as the approach control unit had more than enough controllers and with no reverse flow, the average age of the tower controllers started to climb inexorably. We were getting old… This had the consequence that soon controllers in the tower were no longer just bright young titans, we too matured into ripe stingrays with muddy eyes. The relationship between the two units also changed. We, tower people no longer took the abuse lying down that was regularly meted out by the approach controllers and through many confrontations we forced them to accept our unit as their equal.
Click here to read the full article
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.
Click here to read the full article
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.
Click here to read the full article
The tower with a soul… 9
On 18/03/2010, in The tower with a soul, by lajos
Parties then and now
As I said earlier, the tower was standing in the middle of the prairie. This was both an advantage and a disadvantage. Very little of the dirt and mud throwing that went on in the main building actually reached the tower. At the same time most decisions were made without our involvement, we had practically no chance to influence our own fate. You will also remember that the tower had no appointed boss and some of the division heads just used their positions to climb higher and avoid ever having to come back to the tower. But there were other colleagues also who worked hard to attain prominence via ways other than their professional performance. They were focusing on a party career…
They had two great ways of avoiding work, the Communist Youth Federation (KISZ) and the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (MSZMP). Both
organizations had their offices in the main building and they held their meetings during working hours, mainly at times of highest traffic… Members used the services of Sanyika (you remember him? Sanyika with the Barkas body…) to ride to the main building and they attended the meetings as long as it took for the busiest traffic to subside. Then they returned, exhausted and worked without much enthusiasm until it was time to go home. The saying “errors will only be made by those actually working” had its origins in this strange setup. Since those party members always managed to abstain from heavy work, it was us who were left to fill in for them that made the smaller and bigger mistakes that are unavoidable even at the best of times. Guess who were eventually designated as poor controllers in the eyes of top management?
Click here to read the full article
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
Click here to read the full article
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.
Click here to read the full article
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.
Click here to read the full article
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…
Click here to read the full article
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.
Click here to read the full article
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.
Click here to read the full article
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.
Click here to read the full article
Aerodrome control towers of the world – Budapest, Ferihegy
On 10/11/2009, in Towers of the world, by steve
The origins
The Budapest area has had three airports before operations moved to the current location, Ferihegy. The first Hungarian aviation pioneers tried their wings at Rakosmezo, a forlorn and ill-equipped pasture where enthusiasm was the only thing that kept those daring souls in the air. The first “real” airport was at Matyasfold, the second at Budaors on the other side of the Danube. This was a singularly poor choice for an airport, frequent fog and low clouds, combined with hills in almost every direction left many a pilot sweating before their plane bounced on the nicely trimmed grass.
The idea to build a new airport came in 1938 and the tender for the new airport terminal was published in September 1939. The result was announced in December of the same year. The winning design was that of Karoly David jr. who had a truly unique idea: the building, when viewed from above, would resemble a twin-engine propeller aircraft.
Click here to read the full article
Anniversary – IL-18 HA-MOH crash at Budapest-Ferihegy airport
On 10/10/2009, in Anniversaries, by steve
35 year anniversary on 15 January 2010
Some anniversaries are occasions for sadness and a moment’s silence. An aircraft crash is always sad, a huge loss for everyone involved. When HA-MOH flew into the ground in the early evening of 15 January 1975 only 9 crew members were on board and they all lost their lives. She was on a positioning flight coming home from Berlin. They were stuck there for several days, waiting for the visibility to improve in Budapest.
The plane struck the ground 1360 meters from the runways threshold and about 120 meters from the centerline. The probable cause has been given as bad weather, darkness, fog, lack of crew coordination and possibly spatial disorientation.
Click here to read the full article
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.
Click here to read the full article
Same time, same place, same level… 8.
On 30/09/2009, in Same time, same place..., by steve
View from the tower
There can be little doubt that an airport looks its best from the control tower. True, pilots may lay claim to this, insisting that nothing equals the view from the front office window of an airplane in the final stages of its approach, but for earthbound controllers, the tower is absolute tops.
The panorama afforded by the wraparound windows set at 60 or more feet above ground level is nothing short of breathtaking and the sight of the tiny airplanes, ground vehicles and people moving far below transports one back right into our childhoods’ dream world of model railways. In addition, there is very little happening at an airport without the tower people being aware of it and this tends to impart a sense of power. It is only natural that controllers in the tower should have their share of stories to tell.
Click here to read the full article
