It would appear that we have survived the 2011 winter season without major hiccups. Events arose only when a bored office-bug decided to fabricate an elephant from a flea… Luckily either they were not bored enough or there was a lack of fleas but the number of overblown events were also thankfully low.
What was completely unique in my 28 year career (my goodness, 28 years?) is the fact that we had not a single day of freezing rain, this great enemy of controllers and pilots alike. Freezing rain makes the snow clearing brigade shiver also, making their work totally useless. When freezing rain strikes, they can spread all kinds of miracle substances on the runways and taxiways but the effects are short lived and within 10 minutes or so they can start all over again. But luckily we did not have any of this during the past winter season.
What we did have was a meeting of the group leaders, we practically started the year with that. Two noteworthy items were on the agenda: one concerned the reduction of paperwork the other an effort to achieve more uniformity in our work. In respect of the former we got the usual promises from our bosses who stated that the “project” was shaping up nicely… A bit more patience and it will be the end of paper journals, daily reports and paper incident reports (of which there are at least three kinds), everything will be done electronically. After two months I took the liberty to enquire: how was the project progressing? Because we always get briefed about everything except the important things, I mean the things important for us… And I think this is where the problems are, in Hungarocontrol ATC has been relegated to the peripheries. The office bugs who know nothing of the trade are working (?) so hard, they have practically overshadowed the real stuff. Even in higher management the number of real professionals has dropped to almost zero and the few Indians still holding out seem to have some difficulty in remembering where Ferihegy Tower is… But we do have scores of projects… As expected the reply to my question was, please have a bit more patience, the project is advancing but there are still a few administrative obstacles to be eliminated.
We did not reach consensus on the other subject either. One half of the supervisors would prefer to work closely adhering to the prescribed rules, the other half tends to prefer a more flexible style of working. We were informed a little while ago that we were not controlling aircraft, we were creating a product. This was said by one of the managers of the company running the airport at a winter refresher course. So we produce a product and the buyers are the airspace users. There is some logic in this of course and this is why the kind of product we create is of interest. In the end, this determines what kind of service the customer gets. Fine meat or a fatty nightmare. In my simple logic “fine meat” would be work in which an aircraft does not have to taxi all around Terminal 2 unless absolutely essential, where they taxi on the shortest possible route if there are no obstacles. Policemen on the highway are supposed to help cars avoid traffic jams and not send them into the traffic jam.
I was really saddened to see that colleagues I though knew better were also tending towards the nightmare kind of meat in the belief that this would finally bring order to Ferihegy Airport. One could of course write a separate study on the subject of what is meant by “order” in various people’s vocabularies. Unfortunately in our case the tendency is for senseless pretensions and there is a real danger that airlines will not want our kind of meat… they will go to countries around us where they practice democracy in a more skilful way.
What can a Don Quixote like myself do in the circumstances? I cannot force change on my own, so have no choice but to join the crowd like a sheep and use my energies for other ends.
Luckily there are also good things at Hungarocontrol even if they were in danger for a while at the beginning of the year. The continued existence of the company sports activities hung in the balance for a time but in the end we did get the essential financial support and so it was worthwhile to join the bowling team. We go to a nearby beer-house once a week to do a bit of bowling and we also enter company-cup competitions. I got my reward very quickly, by chance I rolled my record in the very first competition we entered and with this I won individual third place. Our team finished second, we tasted real victory.
So, this is a quick report from Ferihegy’s 2011 winter which could have turned out much worse but the like of which I would accept also for next year. In the meantime, summer schedules have started and the new SkyCourt was opened… I am not sure how much help air traffic will get from this latter but the supermarket inside will bring nice revenue for someone that is for sure.
