Ryanair to shut down its base in Budapest

Ryanair is shutting down its base in Budapest. The Ferihegy unit of the Irish low-cost airline will be taken over by its Polish registered subsidiary, Buzz.

Ryanair is going to shut down its Budapest base by the end of November and hand over its flights from the Hungarian capital to its Polish registered subsidiary called Buzz, reports Airportal.

The staff working at Ryanair’s Budapest base was called for a general assembly this week where this idea was supposedly announced to the workers. In its presentation shared on Facebook, the company states that whichever employee declines the offer of Buzz will be transferred to another base of Ryanair.

Ryanair states that starting from the first day of December, the operation of the base of Ryanair in Budapest will be taken over by Buzz, which is an independent airline within the Ryanair group.

The change in operation will not have any effects whatsoever on routes or the number of flights to and from Budapest offered by Ryanair.

The cause of this change is that Buzz operates with a lower cost level than its Irish parent company. The Ryanair group wants to take on Wizz Air in this way which operates at a lower cost and shows ambitious growth on the grounds of the Hungarian capital’s airport like it did on the Polish market.

This statement refers to Eastern and Central Europe as the main market for the development of Buzz.

The Polish registered subsidiary of the Irish low-cost airline started in the summer of 2018 with 5 aeroplanes and the purpose of acquiring shares from the Polish charter market. Ryanair announced on 14 March this year that the previously called Ryanair Sun will go on under the name of Buzz from the fall of 2019. It was stated even back then that Buzz would take over the scheduled charter flights of Ryanair. The company is going to get its own website from the fall of 2019 where passengers will be able to reserve tickets for Ryanair flights as well.

Incidentally, in the early 2000s, there was also a small airline called Buzz in the United Kingdom with London-Stansted as its base. It was established by KLM and operated Boeing 737-300 and Bae-146 aeroplanes but was later purchased by Ryanair, which then discontinued it.

But the brand and trademarks of the company remained in the possession of Ryanair.

Now, the Ryanair group operates five airlines: the Irish Ryanair (DAC), the Austrian Laudamotion, the British Ryanair UK, and the Polish Buzz as well as Malta Air established in the summer of 2019.

According to previous statements, the aeroplanes and staff of Ryanair’s French, Italian, and German bases are to be transferred to Maltese airlines, which are operating with their own license, and thus, the workers pay their personal income tax to their base and not in Ireland. The closing of Ryanair’s Budapest base and the handover to its Polish registered subsidiary company fits into this strategy as well.

Source: airportal.hu