PHOTOS: International airport reopens for tourists in Hungary

The first charter flight arrived at Lake Balaton’s international airport, the Hévíz-Fly Balaton airport, which ran under the name of Sármellék Airport before. The airport staff and even the mayor of Hévíz, Gábor Papp, welcomed German tourists who arrived by plane and bus from Dresden.

According to a post on the airport’s Facebook page, the charter flight is the first of its kind this summer. It landed yesterday at Hévíz International Airport, near Lake Balaton. The flight took off in Dresden with 138 passengers on board. Furthermore, 50 people came by bus from the capital of Saxony.

The charter flights are scheduled to operate between German cities and Hévíz, one of the favourite Hungarian destinations of German tourists, between April and October. According to the airport, the guests will remain for three weeks enjoying the thermal baths and the beauties of Hungary. Most of them found accommodation in Hévíz. Here is a post from the mayor of Hévíz about the arrival of the first charter flight from Germany:

Hévíz was one of the tourist hotspots for Russians before the outbreak of the war. That is why many inscriptions are still in Russian at the airport. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, no more guests came, so the airport and the city had to find alternatives.

The Russian inscriptions remained. Photo: FB/Hévíz Airport

They turned to German tourists, and now there are a lot of travel agencies organising regular trips to the gate of the Lake Balaton area. In 2022, Wizz Air established a pair of flights between Dortmund and Hévíz airport, but it seems that was not profitable. Last December, the company cleared that they would not like to restart it in 2023. As a result, Hévíz Airport remained without a scheduled flight this year.

If you check out the airport’s schedule for the summer, it is clear that they expect only flights of the Sundair to arrive from Leipzig, Dresden and Erfurt. And there will not be too many: one or a maximum of two each month. Interestingly, on 2 April, the airport wrote about the arrival of Air Algerie Boeing 737-800 Cargo.

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