Earlier on I called the history of the Ferihegy control tower a tragicomedy. By the first half of 2010 it seems we have been left with tragedy only. There were so many sad and somber events that even a guy with an essentially optimistic outlook like me is left wondering… Why have we deserved all this? Are we such a hopeless people that natural disasters are not enough for us, we manage to add our own to it, lest anyone feel good and happy.
The first half of the year brought two new cases of colleagues flying west into the sunset, never to return. In the spring, Gyorgyi Kardos joined the ranks of heavenly met forecasters and more recently Miki Hamori left us suddenly, after having enjoyed only three short years of retirement. I knew Miki well, we worked a lot in the same shift. He was one of those rare controllers who returned to the tower from approach control and carried shift Charlie on his back for at least 15 years. I consider him a bit my forerunner. He too was mostly not listened to by our managers when in fact they should have listened. He was so full of professionalism paired with modesty that he should really be an example for the younger generation. It was impossible to get bored when he was around. He was full of stories and his metaphors were without equal. Not all his similes were for the faint hearted but they were all spot on and from him even the rougher metaphors were somehow acceptable and never offensive. Consider this: you are lacking like grunts in the Bear brand cheese. For aircraft descending unusually slowly, he had this: he was descending like a pebble in thick shit. Sorry for the rough example but it is hard to find another metaphor that would be more fitting. His wife was also an aerodrome controller and they retired at almost the same time. Sue, our heart goes out to you!
It is probably inappropriate to call a funeral nice but Miki’s funeral was both nice and perfectly fitting for a man who had dedicated his life to aviation. Light aircraft with Miki’s ashes and close relatives on board took off from Dunakeszi Airport near Budapest and they flew to Ferihegy where the ashes were dispersed over the grassy area alongside runway 31L together with the flower seeds people were asked to bring to the fare-well ceremony instead of flowers. It was hoped the seeds would take and bloom, bringing back memories of better and nicer times past. The airport supervisors formed a cross on one of the taxiways with their vehicles while this was going on, a gesture of note and nice sensitivity.
I will not qualify the rest of the happenings. I trust the reader to do that for us.
The first noteworthy fact was the introduction of the “Apron Guide” service. The idea of having apron control deal with aircraft on the aprons (that do not belong to the control tower anyway) has been on he agenda for a long time. There is nothing wrong with this as such, it was its introduction and the way the system ended up that is of interest. As I described earlier, it took four years of training for us before we were allowed to talk to an aircraft. In the haste to introduce the new service, a short course was sufficient to enable colleagues formerly doing duty on the aprons to perform their new tasks. Not that I am jealous of them, they said themselves that the news tasks did not bring any additional satisfaction… one almost had the feeling that they could live without the new tasks. But look at the process a departing aircraft has to go through now: within 30 minutes of the scheduled departure time, they have to call the tower clearance delivery position to get their ATC clearance. Just before engine start, they will call Ground Control in the Tower who will issue the start-up clearance and with the same swing of the arm, send the aircraft to the Apron Control frequency. The aircraft receives the push-back and taxi clearance on this frequency and is sent back to Ground Control upon reaching the apron/tower transfer point. After taxiing another 300 meters or so, Ground Control transfers the aircraft to the aerodrome control frequency. From here on to the runway and happy take off! In other words, an aircraft needs 5 (five!) frequency changes before it can take off. Landing is much simpler. There an aircraft “only” changes frequencies twice within a distance of 200 meters or so.
Another all time favorite story is the replacement of the STORNO radios. This was “committed” by the powers that be during the past winter. Truth be told, it was time to replace the STORNOs even if there were no major hiccups with them in the past 30 years. May be the available 8 channels were proving too few or the interference caused by overly enthusiastic radio amateurs were reason enough. But the system had worked well and alongside the official message traffic we could insert a bit of “lighter” conversation with the apron guys and the airport supervisors. But we always returned to serious business after the minute or so of irrelevant chatter. The top was reached when the ever vigilant security service thought to have discovered a conspiracy, based on the voice traffic on the STORNO radios. In a way they were right, we did discuss, in our special code language, a meeting to drink some beer in the evening. Come to think of it, was this the actual reason for replacing the STORNO radios? Whatever the reason, one day the STORNO technicians appeared and replaced the whole lot with a new, digital STORNO radio. We were quite happy with this development until it was time to actually use it…
Thanks to modern technology, it is no longer possible to start speaking right away when you want to. First you wait for a musical tone then you wait some more and only after that do you have a chance of having your transmission actually go out. The first reply coming in was also a surprise. Gone were the well known voices, from then on everyone speaks with the same distorted voice and it all sounds like if they were talking from inside a huge bucket. We did try to get the system improved but our bosses went into battle with their hands raised.
Seems we got a bad deal and that was the end of the story. How this system will work if there is a real incident we can only guess. Hopefully we will never have to know.
I have already told you about the competition for the supervisor position and I will not repeat it. All I will say is that with a little foresight, the personnel complement of each shift could have been solved long ago and the new supervisors could be working already. Compared to this we are still short of one supervisor and in my shift we are one less than normal for some time now. But I deserve this… why was I too shy ten-something years ago?
Finally one additional minor thing. The airport was security audited and it is said that an awful lot of shortcomings had been identified at the SRA entries. I would love to see that report because I find it highly suspect that there is such a big discrepancy between the content and the conclusions drawn. The entry procedure implemented earlier was slowly accepted if not liked and we were on almost amiable terms with the security people. Then two weeks ago I noticed that instead of the customary “hello” they once again started to greet us with the formal “Good day”. Then when we entered the barracks where the security check is performed and which is anything but fitting for the 21st century, they undressed us to our underwear… well almost. What had happened? – we enquired but got only unfriendly grunts in reply. We learned later that this was all due to the audit. Hungarocontrol management also informed us in a letter that from now on security will be tightened. Of course for them it is easy to write this up, it is not them who have to go through this torture every day. For me nothing else is left but to shout to the world: Help! I am suffocating from all this democracy.
