Today I had the luck to visit the tower of Schiphol with my former company (Asiana Cargo Airlines) where I worked for a school period of 10 weeks. First it was time for a powerpoint presentation with the length of an hour. Very interrresting, they explained a lot about wich runway to use in what kind of winds from different directions. Also some things about the departures and arrivals at Schiphol. In this tower with a height of 101 meters! you have a beautiful overview of the field, with the newest runway (36L-18R) 7km away.
The buffer:
The Bravo Apron with in the background the Romeo cargo apron.
Close-up Romeo.
The building where Asiana Cargo is working. Sadly enough they will suspend their operations from the 6th of oktober.
Also one of the cool things is that you are (at some point) heigher then the departing/landing traffic. Here seen a Delta A330 taking off from runway 24.
B pier.
C pier.
D pier.
E pier.
F pier.
G pier.
E pier (again)
Up close, very close.
Surinam Airways B747 taxiing out to runway 24.
Close-up E pier.
Two 767's on the Delta gates.
Air Malta being prepared for her journey home.
KLM Boeing 777-200ER just after a landing on runway 27.
Big mama keeping a watch over the children.
KLM's Boeing 744F now operating for MPH.
Fish eye.
Now it's time to see some of the equipment they use here at Schiphol Amsterdam. If the tower runs full operation during an outbound or inbound peak there is room for nine controllers, now there were five controllers so it was not that busy. I expected some highly focused people but really they are quite relaxed and enjoy their job (altough that's how it looked like).
This is how a ''working desk'' looks like. On the left side of the screen there is a weather panel wich I will have a close-up from later. On the right side of the radar screen (wich speaks for it self) there is an overview of the runways here at Schiphol.
The runways in use are highlighted, on the left of that there are a couple of black bars reffering to the runway and the wind direction+speeds.
Wind panel.
Anyone hungry?
I used the flash here because otherwise the picture was all out of focus. The picture sucks because of the flash but you can see a part of the screen otherwise you would not see anything. Black reffering to the apron and taxiways. The label of the airplanes are displaying some information about the a/c type, callsign and wich departure rwy+SID or gate to taxi to.
Enjoying the view.
On this screen you can see some more information about runway and the weather. All is described on the screen no explanation needed.
Liked the angle myself.
This was a quick overview of my tower visit, I hope you liked them! Really a fantastic exprience.
Kind regards,
Maikel van der Heijden