New flights reachable from Budapest, but unique tax hinders progress

You may reach 121 destinations from Budapest’s Liszt Ferenc International Airport this summer, which is good news. However, that number could be higher, provided the government had not introduced a unique tax last year, after Orbán’s fourth consecutive landslide election victory. Interestingly, the operator of Hungary’s main airgate, the Budapest Airport Ltd, rarely talks about the economic harms the tax caused. Now, they opened the news website of the Hungarian National Bank.

The summer season kicked off at Hungary’s nr 1 international airport, Ferihegy. The crowd is ever-growing at the air gate, and the company operating it expects 1.5 million people per month. They hope they will reach at least 85 percent of the 2019 passenger traffic, which was a record then. The first five months are promising: 5,345,288 passengers showed up at the airport. That number is 31.2 percent higher than in 2022.

Of course, that is not surprising. The consequences of the COVID baulked expansion and progress in 2022. For example, it was hard to reopen all the closed flights, do the paperwork, etc. But there was something else. Budapest Airport Ltd said the 2023 figures are good concerning the current economic environment. Hungary is still attractive for tourists, and their flight development team did a great job rebuilding lost connections last year, novekedes.hu wrote.

Now, Budapest Airport serves passengers with 121 routes, and the company is constantly in talks with existing and potential partners about possible expansions. Thanks to that, four Chinese cities are reachable directly from Budapest from 19 June: Beijing, Shanghai, Ningbo, and Chongqing. Provided you want to travel to Saudi Arabia, you can travel to three destinations. Among the new routes, there is the Budapest-Belfast and the Budapest-Belgrade ones.

Unique tax in Hungary

However, the number of new routes could be higher provided there was not an excess profit tax (departure tax) . The Hungarian government introduced that in 2022 and airlines must pay it after each passenger. Of course, every airline forwarded the extra costs to the travellers, but the unique burden still baulks progress. That is why the increase in passenger numbers falls behind the European trend. Furthermore, Budapest Airport knows flights that were cancelled because of that tax.

Novekedes.hu shared the favourite destinations of people travelling from Hungary: the UK, Germany, and Spain. The former two are in the top because Hungarians go there to work, while the third one is a popular holiday destination. Concerning the cities, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Tel Aviv, Antalya, and Istanbul are the most popular ones. Meanwhile, most passengers come from the UK, Germany and Italy from abroad.