Inside Aviation: Open Day at Bonn-Hangelar
I have already visited quite a few flight decks this year (the first one on a Germanwings flight, the second one on an SAS flight) and today a further opportunity opened. The small Bonn-Hangelar airport, just a few kilometres south of the bigger Cologne-Bonn airport, has a kind of "aviation weekend" this weekend and several planes (mostly older ones) and helicopters were shown. Check the short video for a few impressions (broadband connection recommended):
A few notes on what you see: First, there was an information booth from German Air Traffic Control "DFS" (Deutsche Flugsicherung). In there was a simulation of an airport tower from Düsseldorf airport. The two air traffic controllers were "real" and normally work at Cologne-Bonn airport. First I thought it would be a bit boring to just see numbers move on a radar screen, but what they showed was actually quite interesting.
450 Planes over Germany
There was a screen which showed the current air traffic over Germany. At the very moment I filmed the screen, about 450 aircraft were in German airspace. Quite a lot if you see the littles planes on the map. For every aircraft you can see the flight number, altitude and speed. Besides all the technology involved, they still use a physical "priority list" of planes, where each plane gets a tag and when the plane has landed the tags are removed by hand - one by one. Planes in upper altitudes over Europe are controlled by EUROCONTROL, situated in -believe it or not- Maastricht.
German Federal Police (Bundespolizei), actually headquartered just a few kilometres from Hangelar, showed their helicopters. Although I am not an helicopter specialist, I talked to the mechanic of the Eurocopter model. He told me that it has "everything you'd wish for" and that it's currently one of the best helicopters on the market. It really looked awesome. It's used mainly for reconnaissance tasks like patrolling railway tracks. He actually went so into details about their "orders", as they call their tasks, that I better don't mention it here.
Air Taxi Service
At the last one of three Bundespolizei helicopters shown, one of his colleagues told me that Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel and even the Pope have used it. He said that Bundespolizei provide a kind of air taxi service, the so-called Flugbereitschaft. This air service can be called and then they come and pick up their VIP guests.