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.