PHOTOS: Hungarian plane landed on sea
Aeroexpress’s amphibian Cessna plane landed on the Aegean Sea. That is the first time in at least of the last 100 years that a Hungarian aircraft landed on the sea, airportal.hu, a Hungarian air travel news outlet, wrote.
Aeroexpress is a relatively new Hungarian airline born in 2022, but it had ambitious plans and a remarkable past. Last year, they talked about their aim to connect Central-European regions and cities with short-distance flights following the Finnish model. They fly between Budapest and Cluj-Napoca (Kolozsvár, Romania) with four pairs of flights each week. Their first Hydroplane landed at Budapest Airport this May. We wrote in THIS article about the attitude of the Hungarian government towards Aeroexpress.
However, Aeroexpress not only plans to connect Central European cities but they also aim to restart water flights. This May was the first time since 1938 that a Hungary-registered hydroplane landed on Lake Balaton. Now, they went to the Adriatic Sea, setting a new record. Thanks to an international streaming platform’s new series, the Cessna had to fly from Bőny to Athens. Hungarian hydroplanes flew over the sea in WWI for the last time, airportal.hu wrote.
Here are some photos:
Experienced pilots landed on sea
Márton Széchey, a training pilot of the Airbus, has been roaming on the Adriatic several times as a sailor. However, the strong waves needed his maximum concentration when he landed the Cessna 206. Imre Farkas and Viktor Nikházy helped him, both having tremendous experience.
Aeroexpress trademark is 100 years old this year. In 1923, their ancestor started carrying passengers from Budapest’s Gellérthegy to Vienna and Lake Balaton. Now, they cooperate with BASe Airlines Zrt. aiming to create flights reaching settlements in the Carpathian Basin, which are difficult to access by train or car. They also would like to restart water flights in Hungary. Therefore, they carried out test flights last year on the Danube (Adony) and three places at Lake Balaton using their Cessna 206. That has become one of the main attractions of the Hungarian airshows.
3 pilots needed to land a small plane? How much room is left for passengers?
On trial runs you need experienced persons to be on hand. I’ve flown in tiny planes up in the very norther part of Canada where I did construction and also once in the NE US to make it to a twice weekly ferry crossing to my Nova Scotia home after a winter in Key Largo. The damn little things are blown around by the winds that high up like a facial tissue. But a small cooler full of snacks sits just behind the pilots’ seats & all is well if there is juice & home baked cookies.