New flights and summer-like record at Budapest Airport during the Easter holidays
Airportal.hu reports that there is an extremely busy flow of passengers at Budapest Airport during this year’s Easter period – the numbers resemble the summer peak. Over 40 thousand passengers departed and arrived at Budapest on both Thursday and Friday.
As it is a custom during most holidays, a lot of Hungarians who work abroad came home to celebrate the spring holiday with their families. Still, quite a number of Hungarians decided to travel abroad and spend Easter somewhere else. The third type of flow was represented by foreigners who arrived in Hungary either to visit relatives or simply to travel.
Even though the 2018 summer timetable was introduced just a couple of days ago at the Budapest Airport, there are already new flights announced.
Four new routes were introduced last week, and the first overseas flights will take off in early May.
You can fly from Budapest from the Bay of Biscay all the way to Norway, which will take off according to the summer timetable that set in this weekend. It is now a custom to align the changes in the timetable according to the daylight saving time, as there are significantly fewer flights operated in the winter season.
Aside from the new flights introduced by the Budapest Airport, several airlines announced that – thanks to the high demand – they will increase the number of the already operating flights. A consequence of this is that in the period between the end of March and end of October, there will be almost 500 thousand more seats available than in the same period last year.
The new flights available in the 2018 summer season from Budapest:
| Airline | Destination | First flight takes off on | Number of weekly flights |
| Wizz Air | Stavanger | 15 March | 2 |
| Wizz Air | Athens | 25 March | 4 |
| Ryanair | Santander | 26 March | 2 |
| Ryanair | Paphos | 27 March | 3 |
| LOT | Krakow | 28 April | 6 |
| Wizz Air | Basel | 3 May | 5 |
| LOT | New York JFK | 3 May | 4 |
| LOT | Chicago O’Hare | 5 May | 2 |
| American Airlines | Philadelphia | 5 May | 7 |
Kam Jandu, the commercial director of Budapest Airport, said that in less than a month, four transatlantic routes will be available from Budapest, which is a first in the history of the Budapest Airport.
Direct flight to New York will be possible from the beginning of May, a new introduction is the twice-weekly Chicago flights along with the daily flight to Philadelphia by American Airlines.
He further added that the latter one fits well with the popular and daily flight operated by Air Canada Rouge to Toronto.
Also, there are more places in Europe approachable from Budapest, such as Stavanger in Norway, Santander in Spain, or Paphos in Cyprus. The scale of the destinations becomes wider and wider, so Budapest Airport is proud to say that they can provide more and more journeys for their Hungarian and foreign customers.
The following table shows the previous number of flights from Budapest and the current, increased numbers:
| Airline | Destination | Numbers increased | |
| Lufthansa | Frankfurt | from 5/day | to 6/day |
| LOT | Warsaw | from 4/day | to 5/day |
| Finnair | Helsinki | from 2/day | to 3/day |
| Turkish Airlines | Istanbul | from 2/day | to 3/day |
| Air Canada Rouge | Toronto | from 3/week | to daily |
| Iberia | Madrid | from 1/day | to 2/day in August |
| Aeroflot | Moscow | from 3/day | to 4/day |
Photo: facebook/Budapest Airport
Source: airportal.hu