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.
Restrictions aplenty
But of course three others were still left and in any case, we gave preference to the bayonet system. Aligning things with the location of Terminal 2, arrivals came down on 31R and departures took off from 31L. When wind called for changing landing direction, it was the exact opposite, arrivals on 13R, departures on 13L. All nice and dandy but foreign airlines and aircraft in the light category, stuck at the old Terminal, started complaining that they had to taxi far too long… To alleviate this problem, they were allowed to land on 31L and to take off from 13R. This however resulted in folks who called the village of Vecses their home starting to shout about the “intolerable” noise… New restriction: only aircraft in the light category and types with the appropriate noise certificate were allowed to use the “old” runway (31L/13R).
Of course this too has led to a number of funny situations. The aircraft type shown in the Flight Plan could, with a slight typing error, result in a C130 landing on 31L instead of a C150, as it did indeed happen. Our new task of having to ask the pilots whether their aircraft had the requisite noise certificate was also a strange thing to say the least. How could we check whether they replied truthfully? Of course over the years things settled down and to-day most everyone knows which runways they may or may not use.
The next restriction? Take-offs from 31L had to turn right to a heading of 320 after passing the Alfa locator since the populace rebelled also under the climb out track of 31L. This more or less ended the 1 minute rule, using which we could launch planes one minute apart in all directions of the compass. It was replaced by the 3 minute rule which does not appear much of a step forward, does it?
Take-off direction 13L was the only one left for exercising our artistic traits. An aircraft taking off on 13L could turn in any which direction, there was nobody to complain. On occasion, we did use this to good effect. It was such a majestic sight, the first departure turning left towards OKI, the second turning right while the third flew straight on towards the south. It was like a flower bud opening up and some pilots actually added their art to the performance…
In those days working with an approach controller worth his salt one could put up really nice shows! I must stress we never did anything against the rules… well, we came near the edges here and there but there was never any danger. We simply enjoyed what we were doing and also pushed the flexibility of runway usage as far as was possible. For instance, we often brought arrivals from the North in on runway 13R if this did not result in departures on 31L having to wait too long. The reverse was even more exciting when with landing direction 31 we allowed the occasional departure to take off from 13L. The worst that could happen was that the arrival had to fly a bit longer on the downwind leg if the opposite direction departure was slow getting its act together. But it was so nice to watch on radar as the climbing and descending aircraft passed each other in opposite directions.
These were the best times, I felt intensely alive and traffic was also being moved swiftly. Using these procedures we could have handled three times more traffic.
What came next however was the change of political system, bringing bureaucracy and paralysis… and an ever growing distance from Approach Control.
To be continued…