Parties then and now As I said earlier, the tower was standing in the middle of the prairie. This was both an advantage and a disadvantage. Very little of the dirt and mud throwing that went on in the main building actually reached the tower. At the same time most decisions were made without our… Continue reading The tower with a soul… 9
Category: The tower with a soul
The first 25 years of Ferihegy Tower as seen through the eyes of an air traffic controller
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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… Continue reading The tower with a soul… 8
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The great escape and some unintended consequences With the future of the tower work no longer being really promising, a lot of the younger guys “escaped”, some of them going all the way to Canada! When three of them left within weeks of each other, we had no other choice but to reorganize the shifts… Continue reading The tower with a soul… 7
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A ship without a skipper The first two-three years in the life of the new tower passed in the fever of newness and building experience. For us newbie’s everything was new by definition but even the older colleagues had to get used to the numerous new taxiways and the methods of using two runways. But… Continue reading The tower with a soul… 6
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Flying over the cuckoo’s nest A really cute novelty was the cuckoo act. This was the art of working during the night shift while being in deep sleep at the same time. I did not have much of a need to spend whole nights wide awake before coming to ATC… I mean, even in the… Continue reading The tower with a soul… 5
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Wrestling with the “furniture” The huge control panel for the various ground lights, like the taxiway lighting, was next to the ground controller’s console. The control panel was teeming with various switches used to turn various sections of taxiway lights on and off. The panel was variously nicknamed Christmas tree and railway shunting-yard. The multitude… Continue reading The tower with a soul… 4
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In memoriam… Luckily, this subject can be kept short. Our tower is only 25 years old so most of us have not yet had the time to get old… Unexpected tragedies have also mercifully spared the tower crew with the only exception being KG, who left us prematurely. But he made his name originally as… Continue reading The tower with a soul… 3
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Envy and other incomprehensible things We were off to a turbulent start when the “old-timers” discovered that our starting salaries were the same as the salary of a controller after one year… we were certainly not to blame for this disparity but took all the flack nevertheless. Some of the more senior colleagues from the… Continue reading The tower with a soul… 2
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Preface Having held an Aerodrome Control rating in my ATC license and having actually worked as an aerodrome controller, I have this “thing” for the most spectacular air traffic services unit of them all, the Aerodrome Control Tower. Not only is their role vital in running airports efficiently, they are also for the most part… Continue reading The tower with a soul… 1
New series on Roger-Wilco. The tower with a soul…
If you enjoyed reading the sometimes incredible stories in Same Time, Same Place, Same Level…, keep your seatbelts fastened! The last part of Same Time having just been published, we are bringing you a new series under the title: The tower with a soul. This will be the story of the first 25 years in the… Continue reading New series on Roger-Wilco. The tower with a soul…