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.
But those problems were neither few nor petty. We soon discovered for instance that the air conditioning in the tower could do many things but
cooling the tower cab was not among them. The designers seemed to have forgotten that it would need to keep the temperatures bearable in a surround-glass building that was in full sunshine the whole day. Many a summer day we worked in our underpants while the fans provided were good only to get a cold…
When winter came, we had to discover that things were not much better on the tarmac either. The on-stand de-icing method used meant that aircraft had only a limited time to take off before the effectiveness of the de-icing fluid wore off. But aircraft had to taxi far and taxi slow and quite often by the time they reached the take-off runway, they were over the time limit and had to come back for another de-icing exercise. There was (and still is) only one holding bay located at the threshold of 13L so there was no practical way of arranging remote de-icing nearer the take-off runways.
In normal circumstances there would have been a tower chief raising hell with management demanding more concrete (and a better air conditioner…) but we had no such chief.
By the way, this lack of concrete is a problem to this day. Greenpeace can be really proud of Ferihegy; it is the greenest airport in Europe. I heard someone say that London Heathrow has the same area as Ferihegy… I will not go into the differences.
My biggest disappointment was however the fact that approach controllers were no longer required to spend time in the tower. I have tried to figure out the reason and no matter how I looked at it, I could only conclude one thing: human fallibility again. The tower is out in the middle of the “wilderness” and you have to reach it somehow. For us who had started work there from the beginning, it was normal that we had to arrive at the main building 30 minutes early so that after a minibus drive of 6 kilometers we would still arrive at the place of duty on time. But for the older, well versed approach colleagues this hassle was far too much… after all, for them it was ok to walk through the main building gates at 0655 for starting work at 0700… Things were further complicated by the fact that it was not easy to return to the main building during the day if one had business to take care of.
I can imagine the intense lobbying towards management aimed at convincing them that coming out to the tower was a waste of energy (or worse) for approach controllers. Since there was no tower chief to put forward counter arguments and show just how useful the exercise really was, the whole concept of rotation was allowed to shrivel. This also sealed the fate of the idea that would have brought all the ATC units out to the tower into the floors originally planned to fill the space between the pylons.
With this background perhaps it is little wonder that people started to flee from the tower. A few who could manage it escaped to the approach
control unit and it was a huge let-down to see how quickly they forgot where they came from and how they, too, started to look down on the tower controllers and the work we love.
For us youngsters, there was nothing we could do. We were just passengers on a ship without a skipper…
To be continued…