Thanks to the ESA PR Group, the ESA Aviators had the chance to send eight of their members to a very well organised Tour with Fraport behind the scenes at Frankfurt Airport.
After a nice lunch in Restaurant ‘Käfer’ and a presentation a business launch in Terminal 1 together with a delegation of Fraport management and PR department, we departed for the tour behind the scenes.
The baggage control center was busy on the first day of the Lufthansa Flight Attendances. The staff explained us about the pretty old plastic boxes which are still used to contain any piece of luggage and travel it to its’ destination, if needed via up to three different security checkpoints. Each of these boxes has since 30 years a unique binary bar code which has proven to work well and will not become obsolete even in the near future.
Following th
is, we visited the “Airport Main Control Room” that manages live all activities on-site.All surveillance cameras are monitored from here. All major decisions, strategies and movements are coordinated from this room 24/7.
A bus drove us once around the complete airport – inside the fence! Along the old terminal and the new Lufthansa terminal with A380 and B747 side-by-side. Then along the Cargo machines that got unloaded and re-filled. And further west to the automatic landing facilities for runway 25 from where had a nice view on the airplanes departing from runway 25 and 18.
Co
ntinuing counter-clockwise south of all runways along the formerly American base and the General Aviation Apron and right after sunset, we arrived at the threshold of Runway 25C where quite some airliners did their final just above our heads and gave us the chance for quite some nice pictures.
Thank you very much to Bernhard von Weyhe and Melanie Zander for organising this event with Fraport PR and giving us the chance to participate. Most of the pictures were taken and provided by Sebastiaan de Stigter, member of the ESOC Phography Club – thanks for the nice shots!
