MALEV Ceases Operations
On 03/02/2012, in Airline corner, by steve
After 66 years of almost continuous operations, MALEV Hungarian Airlines stopped all flights as of 0600 this morning.
It is always a sad day when an airline stops operations, just like when any well known, big company closes its doors. There can be no doubt that most of us are reading the news of MALEV’s demise with tears in our eyes. We feel with those whose job has suddenly gone up in thin air. But!
It is important to ensure now that in these critical times emotions are not allowed to dominate and perhaps even more important to avoid the political mud slinging, so popular in Hungary these days. What has befallen Malev is in part indeed due to incorrect political decisions but it is much more important to recognize that MALEV, like many other European airlines, has failed to implement the necessary structural changes, that its efficiency was way below what is possible these days and that these were the reasons why they were not able to find a buyer for the company.
MALEV may have been an object of national pride, but in the meantime nobody bothered with the much more important task of implementing the changes required to make it a more efficient operation. Nobody had the courage to rationalize the number of people working there and to take honest account of what kind of airline would be able to operate profitably from Budapest. Why did they have to refuse a recent Spanish offer that would have converted Malev into a low cost carrier? Just one of the many screw-ups…
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Is There Life After the National Airline?
On 06/01/2012, in Viewpoint, by steve
There used to be a time when each country had an airline and it was called the flag carrier. Some countries had more than one airline, but generally only one of them was recognized as the “flag carrier”. Those were the times when States regulated flights between their cities and more often than not, connections were based more on political considerations than economic viability. Very few of the flag carriers ever made money but that was not a problem. Taxpayers were “happy” to pitch in to cover the losses (even though they were rarely aware of their own largesse).
You will only find Hungarian products here!
Then times changed, deregulation hit both the US and Europe and airlines were forced to transform themselves into real commercial operations, accountable to their shareholders. Some were successful, others less so. Icons of the industry like Sabena, Swissair, Pan Am and TWA wend bankrupt and disappeared. Consolidation swept through the industry bringing disgrace to some great airlines as they were gobbled up by their rivals (think of Delta and Northwest or, even worse, KLM being bought by Air France). In the meantime, low cost airlines flourished while traditional carriers kept reducing their costs year on year. One thing is sure: through sweat and tears, the airline industry managed to stay on its feet through the worst economic crises the world has seen since the great depression.
Interestingly, there are a few holdouts, kind of legacy “flag carriers” which still struggle along thanks to handouts from their home States which, apparently, have not caught on to the changes taking place in the world.
One of these holdouts is Malev, Hungarian Airlines. I am particularly interested in them because I started my aviation career in 1969 at Malev, who was back then also the owner of the air traffic control service in Hungary.
Malev has never been big and in the communist times they were operating like any other state enterprise. No problem with fuel guzzling Russian aircraft types, no problem with being inefficient and no problem with having roughly nine times as many people per available seat than any comparable western company. Money was not an issue…
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Landing Gear Problems – Seen from the Tower
On 02/11/2011, in Life around runways, by steve
Next to the engines, the most complicated single system on retractable-gear aircraft is arguably the landing gear. Not only is it required to sustain huge static and dynamic loads, it must also be able to fold sufficiently to be tucked away in a compartment that would make anyone claustrophobic. Luckily, the landing gear is also one of the most reliable parts of an aircraft. This is as it should be since, as the saying goes, you can land an aircraft without its gear down… but only once.
Last Tuesday, the pilots of a LOT Polish Airlines Boeing 767 rose to the occasion and landed their 767 in Warsaw with the gear up following discovery of a hydraulic system failure that prevented the gear from being extended. After its long flight from Newark, the plane came to rest on its belly but still on the runway with nobody hurt. A bit of luck and great airmanship were in perfect harmony here.
The 767 has short “legs” meaning that the travel of the struts on landing is relatively short and so the damping is correspondingly hard. If you have flown in a 767, you will probably have noticed that it is rare indeed that she arrives back on terra firma in a landing that you would call a “greaser” in old air force parlance. But what the passengers experienced on this landing in Warsaw was the mother of all “hard landings”.
Of course an aircraft coming in to land without gears is something that makes hearts race not only on board but also in the air traffic control units handling the flight. Of them all, perhaps the tower is the most concerned. After all, they will witness in real time and with their own eyes how the landing turns out in the end.
I have memories of two such incidents from many years ago, both involving TU-134s operated by Malev Hungarian Airlines.
The first incident concerned uncertainty about the nose wheel being properly locked in its lowered position. At first it all looked like a normal approach until the pilot radioed the tower as they were descending on the ILS glide-slope that there was a problem with the landing gear and that they wanted to perform a missed approach and go into the holding to investigate. As they whistled over the runway climbing back into the sky, the landing gear appeared to be down but there was no way to ascertain that it was also locked in place. This was one of the older model TU-134s with the glass nose and we all thought of the navigator whose seat is down there in the nose… if the nose wheel folds when it touches down, his seat would be hot… literally.
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A quiet summer. Summer quiet??
On 13/10/2011, in Tower chronicles, by lajos
This summer passed at Budapest Ferihegy Airport almost without any noteworthy events. So much so that the bureaucrats were really in trouble figuring out what to do. In the end they managed to make a “serious” incident from a non-event. They are still mulling over this incident and it has even become one of the feature items in this fall’s refresher training. Here is what happened.
It was at the beginning of the summer that the airport was getting ready for a routine taxiway closure announced by NOTAM. Maintenance was going to work on the taxiway, pumping water from the adjacent drainage canal. This was reason enough to close taxiway A4, one of the busiest. This routine operation should not have been a problem had a small error not entered the picture, setting in motion the domino principle where a series of small errors created a bigger one. I still believe however that if we never had anything more serious than this, we should be grateful… Anyway, the Airport Supervisor (who goes by the abbreviation DAM) was still checking Runway 31R when the NOTAM-announced closure time of the taxiway arrived.
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No place like home…
On 08/07/2011, in Tower chronicles, by lajos
I am happy to report that I have just survived my first encounter with Liszt Ferihegy’s latest pride, the Skycourt. It was not easy to organize but I managed. Here is the story.
With my better half we were preparing for an early Summer break in Jordan, a country we consider almost as a second home, what with our love for that completely different world and nice people. I can only recommend this wonderful country to everyone, a visit will give a unique experience to all (I would be more than happy to provide the telephone number of our favorite taxi driver to anyone interested).
Skycourt Ferihegy...
The only problem is that you must get there somehow and this is only possible these days via the Skycourt. Like my friend Steve before us, we too had to suffer through this. This was so in spite of me being one of the privileged individuals who are allowed to park their car in the official lot leaving the vehicle there for the duration of our holiday. On such occasions my company gives me a temporary parking permit and a no-name magnetic card which opens the barriers through which the car has to pass. Well, it was this magnetic card that caught the attention of the alert security agent just before our entering into the famous Skycourt. How did I come by it; it is not even valid anymore; how dare I take it out of the country???? I stood there incredulous for there was nothing else I could do in the face of his misguided questioning.
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Bright sunshine from historic Ferihegy
On 30/05/2011, in Flashback, by steve
I guess young people to-day are enjoying their days working at Budapest Ferihegy Airport as we did when we were young and felt that the whole world was ours. There was bright sunshine in those narrow corridors even on rainy days, making even the government-issue gray office doors look somehow inviting.
Of course the sphere came not from the building but the people working there, the people who often did not feel the need to take a holiday because they liked their work so much! We were an enthusiastic lot that is for sure.
It is difficult to pick any one person to write about and not worry that I hurt the others, after all, they all had a story to tell that would deserve a place on Roger-Wilco. Come to think of it though, there are a few who were so well liked and so completely part of the scenery that writing about them would feel natural to everyone else.
The story of Istvan Toth (nickname in Hungarian Totyi) will no doubt bring back memories for most of us old-timers and perhaps give some guidance to those belonging to the younger generation.
Totyi, in the middle up front, circa 1972
Totyi was hired by Malev on 17 December 1969 and he started work in the department that provided the air traffic control service in Hungary. Yes, back then the national airline was running ATC… When the Air Traffic and Airport Administration (LRI) was set up in 1973, he continued there and finally retired on 1 February 2008 from HungaroControl, the ANSP that was formed from the ATS parts of LRI in 2002.
He has spent 40 years and 155 days in aviation and I think that he was one of the best known people at Ferihegy Airport. You know, the kind of guy who, if seen standing next to the pope, would have visitors asking: who is that guy next to Totyi?
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Article writing – music by any other name
On 08/04/2011, in Flashback, by steve
Grandad, the composer
My grandfather on my daddy’s side studied to become an architect but after finishing the university, he soon succumbed to his real calling and went on to become one of the best known operetta composers of 20th century Hungary. My dad was an engineer and we all picked vocations that had nothing to do with music. One might think that granddaddy’s talent was somehow lost along the inheritance highway. But looking closer, it is clear that it was not… it only manifests itself in different ways. My brother could tell you his story confirming this but until he does, let me recount how I discovered the presence of this special gift in our family.
Being a Zerkowitz kid in school was not always easy, not least because my music teacher at first was incapable of accepting that I had absolutely know feeling for music and sang in a way for which many will pay… so that I would stop. After a while though she accepted the inevitable but was very nice about it and from then on instead of singing, I had to learn by heart the short life story of selected composers. This was a deal very much to my liking and I played along happily, getting full marks in music class.
Our Hungarian language and literature teacher was also a very nice lady and when she realized that I could throw together a 4 page composition on any subject whatsoever in just a couple of hours, I became her favorite. She took me to author-reader meetings and I think some of the stuff I wrote actually ended up being part of speeches the school principal made on special occasions. But here again I was the cause of endless frustration because of my initial, rather lax, use of the grammar rules. I always felt that my ability to express my thoughts and also abstract constructs like nobody else could in the class did give me some latitude in ignoring certain grammar rules the logic of which always escaped me and which were difficult to remember in any case. I do remember to this day seeing the marks at the bottom of some of my compositions: 1/5 and 5/5. The 5 was for the composition, the 1 for the grammar of course.
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Budapest’s SkyCourt – will the security check point hold up?
On 06/04/2011, in On the go..., by steve
Budapest Ferihegy Airport has recently opened an impressive passenger hall between Terminal 2A and 2B. It is something truly attractive with an inner space that seems to be even bigger than it actually is… and it is huge by any measure. The architects have really excelled with this steel and glass building which embraces you with light whether it is day or night. You can eat and shop or just sit around while you wait for your flight.
A cute idea picked right from Las Vegas casinos… when you enter the SkyCourt after security control, you must walk through the booze store to reach the rest of the facility. The stores are not particularly impressive though, they are the usual collection of brand names selling stuff at exorbitant prices. But this is not the biggest problem of SkyCourt.
Its biggest problem is the security check point.
I do not know what the experts had in mind when they allocated the ridiculously cramped area for the security lanes… may be they wanted to maximize the commercial space and cut the rest just a little too small. This will be a killer when traffic picks up. Last night there were only about 20 of us and with two lanes operating, we stood in line for almost 5 minutes!
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17 December 2010 – 75th anniversary of the first flight of the DC-3
On 17/12/2010, in Anniversaries, by steve
Our industry has a number of icons, aircraft that have turned out so good and have made such an impact that they leave their imprint on the skies forever. The DC-3 is certainly such an aircraft and it has not lost its aura of excellence since its first flight on 17 December 1935. As she flew through the sky of Southern California few if any on board or on the ground realized that it was the first day of a new era in aviation history. The DC-3 went on to become a legend and it is still with us as a faithful workhorse in many parts of the world.
My very first flight, at age 8 was in a Li-2, the version of the DC-3 built in the Soviet Union. MALEV, the Hungarian airline had a fleet of Li-2s and a single DC-3 and on week-ends these were put to work to carry sightseers over Budapest. My Dad who knew how fascinated I was by airplanes bought two of the not so cheap tickets and took me for a ride. It was wonderful! A year later he again got a pair of tickets and this time I went with my cousin who was a few years older than me. This time the ride was a disaster.
For some reason (which I discovered only years later) the pilots flew like a runaway rollercoaster and while their antics were probably attractive to the girls on board, for me it was nothing but a frightening 20 minutes at the end of which I was really happy to feel terra firma under my feet again.
Climbing and then descending steeply at low level was not my kind of fun. That it was not the safest way to fly either was demonstrated a year later when, on 8 June 1961 HA-TSA, MALEV’s sole DC-3 crashed into a house while on a sightseeing flight, killing all 27 souls on board. They apparently pulled up just a tad too late… I have been wondering ever since: was there also a kid, with frightened eyes and biting his lips, on that fateful flight too?
That accident served up a frightening experience also to the tower controller handling the flight. After they took off, the controller noticed he longish silence and missing a report from the pilots, he grabbed his mike and enquired: HA-TSA are you still alive? The aircraft had crashed just a few minutes earlier… When those words were discovered during the investigation, agents of State Security were convinced that the guy had something to do with what had happened and gave him a very hard time before he was able to clear his name…
I am sure there are many people out there who have their own stories about the DC-3… one day we should write them all up and share with the world. This is the least we could do to honor the 75 years of DC-3 flight.
When things go wrong…
On 15/09/2010, in Flashback, by steve
The aviation industry has such a wonderful safety record that people boarding an aircraft rarely, if ever, think about the possibility of an accident happening to them. Of course the same people will have driven down the highway to the airport similarly unaware that, statistically, they were in a much more dangerous place than on board their aircraft. This is as it should be of course.
But for those of us whose life is dedicated to aviation as pilots and air traffic controllers, incidents and accidents have a different meaning altogether. We train to handle them intellectually and emotionally and we do everything we can to prevent and avoid them. Nevertheless, on occasion things do go wrong and we are in danger of being reduced to mere spectators of the brute forces of physics.
But we fight back, to the last breath, the last instruction, the last pull on the control yoke and never give up. In many cases, this kind of resolve can actually beat the odds and we turn a potential catastrophe into an incident of little consequence.
We all have memories of cases where things had gone wrong. Some were more serious than others, in some friends and colleagues flew west into the sunshine never to return in others some escaped with their lives while others did not.
I will never forget the sight of the blackened vertical stabilizer of the IL-18 that flew into the ground in Budapest in bad weather or the voice of the navigator of a TU-134 who continued broadcasting a narrative of what they were experiencing on board as the stricken aircraft that had lost all instruments in near zero visibility slowly rolled to one side finally hitting the ground with its wingtip…
I was on duty when we got the AFTN messages that a Tu-154 of MALEV went missing over the Mediterranean and the message was brought to the duty supervisor by the tearful wife of the captain of that flight (she was one of the operators on duty in the AFTN centre). The IL-18 that went down while approaching Copenhagen in pouring rain, took off from Budapest while we were on duty in the tower.
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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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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…
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Smooth cruise – The WizzAir experience
On 17/06/2010, in The lighter side, by heading370
Editor’s note: This article dates from 2007. We are now an economic crisis later but the essence of the story is still the same. What is more, WizzAir, operating 30 aircraft, is still with us and hopefully will remain for a long time to come.
WizzAir, the largest low fare – low cost airline in Central and Eastern Europe launched operations in May 2004. They concentrate primarily on the lucrative markets of the newest EU member states where air travel is going through some really dynamic expansion. This policy has lead to the opening of routes to Eindhoven for example. The company operates these flights from Budapest, Hungary and Katowice in Poland. The author, who is an Air Traffic Controller at the Maastricht Upper Area Control Center (MUAC) was happy to join the crew of the Eindhoven-Budapest-Eindhoven flights at the end of March.
On the ramp at EHEH
Eindhoven is still a relatively quiet airport where the atmosphere is quite relaxed and hassle-free. It is shared by civil and military users the biggest operator – apart from the Koninklijke Luchtmacht (The Royal Air Force of the Netherlands) – is Ryanair. Also Transavia and a few Turkish charter companies fly there regularly and on a typical day the airport handles about 20 arrivals.
After some really helpful co-ordination with the company’s operations control, crew rostering section and the Head of Training, Captain Gabor Lezsovits, I was ready to board HA-LPD, (c/s number 1902) an Airbus A320-200 that operated as WZZ228B.
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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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Hungarians buy themselves an airline – Has MALEV been saved?
On 05/03/2010, in Airline corner, by cleo
It would be so nice being able to report here that the Hungarian government has finally found the magic bullet and their buying back of MALEV Hungarian Airlines was the first step in making the ailing company healthy again. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. It was politics that has given MALEV a new lease on life with no magic bullet in sight.
This was painfully evident in the interview with MALEV’s CEO Martin Gauss, shown in the morning program of Hungarian television aired on 4 March. The poor guy was trying to explain why he believed they had a good plan and in the process described how MALEV will first shrink, then grow, how they will copy the good things from the low-cost airlines and reject the bad ones… Nothing that we have not heard before and nothing that has actually worked for others in a similar predicament.
MALEV looks back on a proud history that started on 26 November 1950 when the company began independent operations as the successor of MASZOVLET, a post-war enterprise run together with the Russians. As the national flag carrier, MALEV flew far and wide, providing the vital links to Europe and the Middle-East during the communist years. Its Russian built aircraft were fuel guzzlers and the productivity of the company was nothing to write home about… But back then such things were of no consequence. The State had deep pockets and all holes created by the national carrier were plugged immediately.
When capitalism finally arrived in Hungary twenty something years ago, MALEV, like many other old names in the country was faced with the cruel realities of real competition. In all fairness we must add that the predicament of MAELV was perhaps even worse than that of the others because competition in the airline world is so much deadlier than elsewhere.
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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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Same time, same place, same level…11
On 22/10/2009, in Same time, same place..., by steve
Animals seen from the tower – chicken in boxes
Animals flown by air seemed to create all kinds of difficulties. Our local airline had a number of elderly turboprops, with a few years’ worth of flying time left in them, and these were converted for cargo duty. The catch was they had no big cargo doors, neither was there any chance for a retrofit. So they carried only stuff which could pass through the original openings. In spite of this limitation, they were pretty busy most of the time.
When one of the big farms started exporting live chickens, it was only natural they should come for help to the national airline. The cargo people were happy, as the chicks, one day old at the time of transport, were housed in nice cardboard boxes, 101 chicks to a box. The supernumerary plus 1 chick was supposed to account for the unavoidable casualties while in transit. Now can you imagine the stench and noise created by a few tons of day old chicks? We couldn’t, but according to the crews it was quite phenomenal.
The first few flights went well, but then summer came, and one day they found half the “passengers” dead on arrival at destination. The Arab buyer refused to accept the shipment and even threatened to break the contract if this ever happened again. Since a lot of money had been riding on those flights, the experts got together to investigate. They traced events right from the moment the chicks were hatched in their mechanical mother, through transport to the airport and finally to the loading operation. Everything appeared in order. Next, they wanted to look at the flight itself.
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Interesting people, unusual flight plans…
On 21/10/2009, in Interesting people, by steve
Istvan Bozsa – forever controller
What were you dreaming of becoming when you were a kid?
We lived near the airport and I was dreaming of becoming a pilot from very early on. I remember how we took the bike to ride all the way to the perimeter fence and watch the planes for hours on end. I must admit that we also stopped to watch the trains at the railway crossing but the planes were the main attraction.
Traditionally there is an air-show on 20 August in Budapest and watching it I felt this incredible pull and attraction… I wanted to be part of it all; I wanted to be a pilot.
I think my son has inherited this weakness… he has his PPL already (and an Aeronautic MEng).
How did you then actually become part of the ATC family?
Ice cream… it was the ice cream! At the time one of the best pastry shops in downtown Budapest had a satellite unit at the airport. The mother shop’s name was Honey Bear and the one at the airport was simply the Bear… They had the best parfait this side of the Solar system and we went there regularly to load up on that thing, teeth be damned.
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A venerable old lady – the Ilyushin IL-18
On 14/10/2009, in Flashback, by steve
She was born at a time when glasnost and perestroika were still only words in the dictionary. A four-engine, turboprop transport that was noisy inside and out, was difficult to fly and needed an oil-well to keep her in the air. Yet she formed the backbone of East European air transport for more years than most of us care to remember and, above all, she was beautiful. With perfectly circular fuselage, sleek wings and graceful vertical stabilizer, the IL-18, by appearance, was a queen among aircraft.
But where did this lady come from?
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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.
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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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60 years of military transport flying
On 12/09/2009, in Just to let you know..., by steve
Those who looked skywards to-day in Hungary could glimpse a sight not previously seen anywhere. An Antonov An-26 of the Hungarian Air Force and the last airworthy Li-2 flew together to commemorate 60 years of military transport flying in the country.
The Lisunov Li-2, wearing the original Malev livery, is one of the several thousand examples license-built in the Soviet Union, actually the Soviet version of the Douglas C-47. The Russian designation was PS-84 and NATO reporting name Cab. It is rumored that the Russians have never paid a cent to Douglas in license fees. This particular example entered service with the Hungarian People’s Army in 1949 and was later turned into a civilian transport with the registration HA-LIX.
The Antonov An-26, NATO reporting name Curl, is a development of the An-24 and was first seen in 1969. It is easy to recognize by the modified rear fuselage housing a large cargo ramp.
Flying almost wingtip to wingtip to-day, the biggest problem for the An-26 skipper was flying slow enough not to overtake the Li-2…
