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.
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.
On the day the new terminal building was inaugurated, 100 small planes arrived at the same time from Austria. We had never seen anything like this before! We worked them gallantly but a good dose of luck was also needed for everyone to land safely. While we were sweating up in the tower cab, in the waiting room below a celebration was being held with the bosses of LRI presenting each other with various bonuses… Only our director ET (no relation to the movie character) came up to thank us for our work.
With the return to normal workdays, we were waiting for the small planes from abroad in vain. Only a few, very few, came. As we discovered, the airport was barely advertised and planes came only when they accidentally found us. We did raise this issue with management but they could not care less. In the circumstances the person charged with running the airport, GJ (who used to fly from there as a police pilot several years earlier) started to make other plans. If planes from abroad would not come, why not organise fly-ins? So, slowly but surely, gliders, powered ultralights, parachutists, hot air balloons appeared at Kiliti airport. Soon we had every kind of flying machine using the airport! This was the beginning of the good life at Kiliti, the real heart warming life of a flying community. Everything was nicely organised. Gliders got the airspace to north of the grass landing strip, the ultralights the airspace to the south and the rest of the traffic was allowed to fly in and out on runway heading. We controllers had to get used to not controlling aircraft, only giving information. Whenever we could we hitched a ride on anything that would take us… We were even allowed to work the controls on occasion, I liked that very much. We even had sight-seeing flights; a Cessna would take you to the Tihany Peninsula and back in 15 minutes!
Kiliti was a lively place during the day and the evenings were no less lively. Pilots based at the airport always had something up their sleeves and we were almost never left with nothing to do… As a direct result, getting up the next day was usually pretty difficult. It were mainly the hot air balloon folks who made trouble, wanting to fly at 6 in the morning. I usually managed to send them away with a few less then polite words before turning on my other side and going back to sleep. We were open for business only from 7 am… could they not understand? But by evening, we were friends again.
This idyllic state of affairs lasted for a few years but in time the ever present Hungarian ill of envy kicked in of course. More and more people started taking aim at the others, through us of course, wanting to know why the others had it better than them. We were stuck in place and hence had to listen to everyone… Truly uncomfortable situations arose and it was more and more difficult to handle them without creating a fuss. The mortal stab came when people from Ferihegy started to take aim at us, complaining about the amount of money we supposedly earned during the four day shifts at Kiliti. In my view our pay was exactly right, after all for four days we had to work from early morning to late evening, every day. When runway lights were installed, we had to extend the service even into the hours of darkness. For a time I endured life on the firing line but enough was enough and after seven years of Kiliti work I quit. I did not apply for the next season. Not long afterwards, the others also quit and our place was taken by flight information officers, chaps specifically trained for providing flight information service only.
The Kiliti airport stayed open for a time but all the fighting around it had its toll and one day it was closed and left to rot. A few years ago I went there and found the facility in a very sad state.
I read something on the internet that they reopened in 2009 but I am not sure how far this is true.
We were also involved in the opening of Sarmellek airport in 1991. Unfortunately, similar to the Kiliti situation, there was almost no publicity and so few small planes came to land there. We had a very boring season! That summer was remarkable for me because I actually worked at three airports, virtually going from one to the other. When somebody called on the phone and asked where I was, I always replied, hey, wait I will look out the window… ok, I am at Kiliti! It was getting too much, so I decided not to apply for duty at Sarmellek any more.
I wanted to tell you about those years because they did leave a permanent mark on my life. Since then I have been working only in the tower at Ferihegy airport but it is not unthinkable that I will return to one or the other of the regional airports when I get older. The regionals are very different, more humane and who knows, one of them might still have a use for me when the time comes.
