Global Airspace Radar sat down with Ferenc Turi, who became the Chief Executive Officer of HungaroControl in 2024, to discuss the strategic challenges facing the ANSP and the ATM industry.
Capacity first
Ferenc is unambiguous about the air traffic controller (ATCO) shortage. “According to some assessments, the lack of capacity in Europe causes airlines something like 800 million euros in losses annually,” he says. “This is the number one challenge – for everyone, including us.” HungaroControl’s response has been a ten-year strategy built around a single projection. On a busy day in 2025, Hungary handled 4,300 flights. By 2035, that figure is expected to reach 7,000. To serve it, the organisation needs to almost double its ACC controller count from 116 today to roughly 230–240, on top of replacing retirements, “we recruit 24/7 around the year.”
At the Southeast–Central Europe interface
Geography places HungaroControl at a specific operational pressure point, inserting traffic arriving from Türkiye, the Middle East and Asia into Western European flows. With the Ukrainian airspace closed for four years and Middle East routings disrupted, the patterns entering Hungarian airspace carry less predictability than the sector configurations are designed to absorb for capacity and safety.
HungaroControl also manages a non-adjacent sector, the Kosovo airspace, bringing additional experience in ATCO training and moving between systems and airspaces. Ferenc adds that despite all successes, ATCO mobility is a term used too lightly. “Airspace complexity is an issue and an argument against overrating mobility potential.”
Regulatory priority: incentives that reflect reality
Ferenc is carefully optimistic about the performance scheme’s next reference period (RP5). He observes that it is now widely agreed that delay KPIs are not the best KPIs to measure performance. “We need capacity KPIs with incentives that link the Network Operations Plan and RP5 more effectively.”
He points to a structural tension that no performance framework has yet resolved: ANSPs operate with large fixed costs and limited flexibility, while airlines face a highly volatile market and competition. Any incentive scheme that ignores this mismatch will continue to produce friction. For HungaroControl specifically, Ferenc sees no liquidity risk: “With our ten-year planning scenarios, we are well prepared.”
Approaching a new era
Two near-term technology milestones define HungaroControl’s operational roadmap. By the end of 2026, they will transition to full remote tower service provision, handling around 140,000 movements annually, making Budapest airport the largest airport in the world to be operated solely through a remote tower system. The second milestone arrives in Q4 2027: the upgrade of the ATM system in partnership with Thales.
Digitalisation and the market structure question
Ferenc identifies digitalisation and service-oriented architecture (SoA) as the two forces with genuine transformative potential for the sector. HungaroControl is fully supportive of SESAR, currently participating in six projects. His view on artificial intelligence (AI) is worth noting. “Technology, including AI, will primarily benefit safety, and productivity to a lesser extent. The effect on headcount will not be significant.”
His commercial background and strong opinions surface when the conversation turns to suppliers. “The ATM technology market operates as an oligopoly – a small number of large players with limited competitive pressure on pricing.” SoA may change this, he adds, by reducing proprietary lock-in, which would in principle create room for new entrants and genuine competition.
Earning the privilege
What makes Ferenc an unusual ANSP voice is his 40 years of airline management and consulting to the sector, where margins are thin and no customer guarantees your revenues. He states that air traffic management is a privileged industry, built for financial stability and safety. And the customers are essentially taking care of the ANSP costs through stable multi-year plans. “We could be the envy of the world. But when I speak with some of my colleagues, they don’t realise how privileged this industry is.” His implication is clear: stability of the ANSP business model comes with an obligation to perform, invest and grow according to traffic demand.
Key takeaways
Ferenc Turi brings something relatively rare to ANSP leadership: a genuine external reference point. His commercial background – in risk management, supplier negotiation and market analysis – produces assessments that are refreshingly unguarded across very different domains: workforce planning, geopolitical risk, technology strategy and market structure. In an industry navigating all four simultaneously, that clarity of perspective is invaluable.
