Passengers spending the night at Budapest Airport: problem explained

On Sunday night, 150-200 passengers arriving in Budapest have been forced to spend the night in a completely empty building at Budapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport. The reason was that they have not received their checked bags in time, only the next morning. Now we know the reason for this inconvenience. Read on to find out!

As we have written before, many passengers had to spend the night in the empty building to Budapest Airport. Now, in response to AIRportal.hu’s questions, the Executive Vice President for Europe of Menzies Aviation, the ground handling company in charge, answered.

Many flights were delayed

Many flights were congested overnight due to delays, causing the problem on Sunday. Menzies has prepared adequate staffing and training to handle the arrivals scheduled for Sunday night, Miguel Gomez Sjunnesson said in his reply.

During the night, however, several flights to Budapest Airport were delayed as a result of the slots allocated to European air traffic. This is a continuing problem caused by the disruption of air traffic.

“Many flights arrived with delays of between 1 and 3 hours, outside of normal business hours, which put our employees under extreme pressure, as they had to service eight planes almost simultaneously, within a short time frame,” Airportal.hu reported Sjunnesson as saying.

Read also: Passengers broke the window to escape hot train in Budapest

The crew took care of passengers first instead of the luggage

The ground crew made the right decision to start unloading passengers from the affected planes instead of unloading luggage,” added the Executive Vice President.

In response to the question of Airportal.hu, the Executive Vice President said that passengers were informed as much as possible that their luggage would be delivered to them later, but unfortunately, this information did not reach many passengers.

Read also: Huxit after Brexit? Rate of pro-EU Hungarians revealed

Menzies will cover the cost of delivering lost luggage

On Monday morning, Menzies informed the people responsible for lost luggage, the airline and the airport that it would cover the cost of delivering the luggage left at the airport,” said Mr Gomez Sjunnesson.

“We are working with our airport partners to review our processes and make the necessary changes to ensure this does not happen again. We apologise for any inconvenience caused to passengers and for the limited communication. Our priority at this time is to ensure that affected passengers’ bags are delivered as soon as possible,” added the Executive Vice President.