A visit to Szeged Airport
In July 2016, a friend who is a pilot needed a few more hours of flight in order to get his license for the Scheibe Falke SF-25 motor-glider, which he had recently bought from Hungary. And as the nearest flight school that offers such services is in Szeged, I took the opportunity to visit LHUD – Szeged Airport. Especially since I knew that there was a lot of flying going on with gliders, motor-delta-trikes and ultra-light planes. The access to the airport is quite easy, both from the highway to Budapest, and also coming from the city where we arrived after driving for about an hour and a half.
I must admit that I was a little surprised by what I found there. It’s not the kind of big airport, at least not in terms of administrative buildings. Although at first glance it does not seem to be much larger than a regular airfield, the LHUD – Szeged Airport still has a considerable surface, most of the space being dedicated to flight activities, while the buildings and parking lot occupy a fairly small area. LHUD – Szeged Airport has two runways, one of which is paved and also has runway beacons for night flight, and a grassy runway. The asphalt runway has a length of 1185 meters and a width of 30 meters, the access to it being made on a taxiway whose length is 621 meters. At the end of the runway there is the aircraft parking platform made of graded green areas. It has a length of 109 meters and a width of 57 meters. The grass track is slightly smaller with a length of 1177 meters and a width of 50 meters.
As far as the infrastructure is concerned, the airport has 4 hangars in which small private planes and helicopters (ULMs, Cessna, etc.) find shelter. It also provides fueling services, with AVGAS 100LL and JET-A1 kerosene for jet aircraft being available. In front of the fueling station there is also a concrete parking platform with the size of 123×83 meter. Fire protection and security services are ensured by 2 fire trucks offering an ICAO protection level 5 (Fire 5). The ICAO code of the Szeged Airport is LHUD and the radio frequency on which they communicate is 122,810 MhZ. The airport administrative offices include customs services and an office of the Hungarian border police, and obviously a control tower. All in all, the airport and especially the green spaces look impeccable.
At the airport, there are two training schools for pilots where you can get your pilot license for airplane, glider or helicopter. There are also two cargo and agro-aviation companies which use Antonov An-2 planes and Kamov Ka-26 helicopters, as well as a soaring club that owns a Zlin Z-326 towing plane and a glider towing spool. I also saw many private owners, not affiliated to any club, flying planes, ULMs or gliders.
Everyone I met was kind, no one was watching me awkwardly as I was taking pictures with a “big black” camera, as it had happened to me on other occasions, the atmosphere being very relaxed. As long as a minimum of safety and common sense rules are followed (like not jumping in front of a plane, for example) everything is ok. And if you get thirsty after a very hot day, as it often happens to be in summer at the airport, there is a small terrace where you can sit in the shade and cool off. The advantage is that the terrace has a direct view towards the 2 runways and the flight activity taking place. I spent several hours at the LHUD – Szeged Airport during which I saw a lot of flying with different types of Cessna aircraft, ultra-light airplanes (Diamond DA20 Katana), moto-delta-trikes, motor-gliders and gliders. During our stay there we did not have the opportunity to see passenger jets, as no such flights were scheduled during that day.
Early in the evening we headed back home. We were to return in September LHUD – Szeged Airport to attend the first edition of Szeged Air Parade and Aviation Days. But we will tell you about this special aviation event in a different article.
