Stormy Sunday and the Formula 1 Race

Like on other days when leaving house for duty at the airport, I was scanning the skies while I walked to my car. Are we going to use runway 13 or 31? Will there be thunderstorms or “flashies” as some people refer to them these days or not? Well, clouds were towering on the South-Western skies and the only question was: where were they heading? For me, a grisly with more years in the tower than I care to remember, the answer was obvious: the only thing we needed during the outbound peak following the Formula 1 race was a set of thunderstorms. This more or less gave the tone for the evening shift on this Sunday.

As our official car approached the tower, we became aware of yet another suspect circumstance. At first we saw a bunch of flashing blue lights near the threshold of Runway 31R and as we drew nearer, the fire engines belonging to them also came into view. My feet rose from the accelerator pedal as if by their own account. Exactly what we needed in this already hectic situation. The question foremost in our minds was: what is better? Should the tired day-crew handle the emergency or should we, rested newcomers? They were up to speed on all the details, we would need to get up to speed… In the end a pragmatic solution was chosen. We changed shifts in the middle in an incredible cabal while the problem aircraft landed normally. The news was they had some kind of fuel-balance problem and this is why they had decided to land at Ferihegy. The fire brigade had the good sense of not overdoing things, the runway remained open and all they did was accompany the aircraft as it taxied to the stand.
We did not spare another thought on it, in no time at all we had a nice inbound/outbound peak (and it is so nice to be able to write this again!). The peak was composed of the last Formula 1 flights leaving plus all the late arrivals who were coming outside of their scheduled times, no doubt having been delayed by the thunderstorms dotting European skies everywhere. So we had plenty to do and we handled the traffic with all work-positions manned.
It was then that the thunderstorms arrived.

The ops supervisor was motoring somewhere around the end of Runway 13R when he announced on the radio that the storm has arrived and that hail was also a possibility. In other words, he had announced the “flashies” and this meant no more fuelling of aircraft. Of course taxiing aircraft also saw what was happening and they asked us to be allowed to depart from Runway 13L. This was in principle ok, except that there were still three arrivals inbound in the opposite direction and the departures would have to wait until they landed. No matter, they would wait. Yes… except that by the time the third arrival landed, the wind from the North-West picked up so that they would not be able to take off because of the excessive tail-wind. While these discussions were taking place in the ether, night fell in less than a minute. Of course this night was created by a very nasty, dark cloud bringing with it winds that once again made the tower rock. Next the sieves were opened and torrential rain fell on the airport, covering the runways with 10 mm of water in no time at all. The supervisor declared the airport closed… The few unfortunates who had not taken off taxied back to the apron and we all waited.
We were looking out the windows at what we could no longer see… The view would not have been much different from a submarine as the water completely covered the tower. 20 minutes passed before some light appeared from the West and the crazy weather started to recede.
Telephone call from the rest area: the ceiling has come lose in some places and there is standing water everywhere. Exactly what we needed! I called maintenance, not really believing they would show up any time soon. I was right and we learned later why they were extra late: Terminal 2A fared even worse than we did, the ceiling came down there too and I guess the technicians were busy with that.
As the sky cleared, we were back in business. Of the aircraft in the holding, the more daring landed, the others went to various alternates. Then a new problem arose, once again proving that Mathias works well only when there is no problem. The flight plans of the three unfortunate aircraft which were unable to take off before the storm were somehow lost in the system. We searched in vain… in all likelihood they were seen as having operated and the flight plans were closed and made to disappear in one clever move. With all the traffic on our hands it was not funny at all, having to deal with the lost flight plans while the pilots were getting more and more impatient by the moment.
When finally new plans were clobbered together, they were not ready as a bunch of new flashies moved in. Fuelling was once again stopped, we had to wait once more. In the meantime we were debating with the colleagues the realities of our situation… It is said that there are modern fuel tenders with a completely closed system and they can be used even during thunderstorms. I am not an expert on this, but if we too have such fuel-tenders, why is this not being made known to the airport services, are they not talking to each other or what?
To cut a long story short, the flight plans of those three aircraft disappeared… again! The flight data section in the main building was convinced that we were responsible… yeh, it is our habit to play with deleting flight plans… We were really pissed and told them in no uncertain terms that we were not stupid to make our own work more difficult than it already was. This made them pissed too but I will not bore you with the details. We could only conclude, that the Mathias system has the habit of becoming self-sufficient… if it does not observe any movement in connection with a given flight plan, after a time it simply deletes it. Since this does not happen often, so far nobody has encountered this odd behavior. But we will be watching now! Although… we knew right from the start that the tower has been an orphan in the eyes of Mathias, so we should not expect a miracle now either.
Having tried so hard, the three birds finally left and by next morning things were back to normal, much to the pleasure of the night watchmen. At least they did not have to ponder on which side to sleep while there was a pause in traffic. They did not have to use sleeping pills next day, that is for sure.
We had no time to get bored on this nice summer evening and looking back now, I see only the nice things and the memory of having worked really hard. Oh yes, there was also a Formula 1 race that day but the aircraft that came as part of the show were handled by the day shift… let them write about those themselves.