Chaos and panic at Budapest Airport: passengers locked into hot bus

People with small children begged in tears for airport staff to let them out from a superhot bus in which nobody could breathe. However, the real difficulties followed only that incident for the passengers of a flight to London-Luton at the Budapest Airport. Here is what happened exactly.

Index.hu received a complaining email from one of their readers about the chaos and panic at the Budapest Airport. The Hungarian news outlet argues that it is incomprehensible why airport staff did not let the passengers out from a shuttle bus despite the panic that broke out inside because of the high temperature and the lack of air.

Everything started with the extreme heat that hit the United Kingdom this week. The heatwave caused issues with the runways of the London-Luton airport. Therefore, they suspended take-offs and landings on Monday because the surface of a runway segment melted due to the heat. The consequences were felt everywhere in Europe, including the Budapest Airport. A Monday evening flight to London-Luton did not receive take-off permission. All passengers had to leave their flight even though they had been sitting in it for an hour.

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After four hours of waiting, boarding restarted. “They put us on a bus and locked it for half an hour.

Mothers with small kids shouted that there was no air and wanted the doors opened.

“Everybody was in panic,” one of the passengers wrote to Index. Staff opened the doors later, but people got stuck near the runway, and nobody told them anything about their flight. People were sitting on the ground because authorities did not allow them to return to the terminal. After a while, they got back and wanted to go home.

“As Hungarian citizens, it is our right to return to Hungary. But we were not allowed to return to the Schengen zone. We needed airport staff to escort us back, but there were none,” she added.

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We were crying and begging to let us home after five hours of suffering, but the border guard did not let us.

That was at 3:30 AM despite our flight being due to take off at 5:55 PM on the previous day.

Finally, they found a woman working for another company who escorted them back to the terminal. “It is terrifying that they did not let us home even though we are Hungarian citizens. After we left the airport, we received an email that our flight had been cancelled. Many had to spend the night at the airport. It was a horrific experience,” she concluded her email.