What will be the fate of Hungarian aviation?

Traffic is close to zero at Budapest Airport. The number of daily passenger flights had reached a record low number by 15 October, when only 13 flights took off.

There has been a drop in flights ever since the borders got closed in September. However, Budapest Airport was able to maintain 25 daily flights in the first two weeks of October, Forbes reports. Besides Wizz Air, Ryanair was also forced to cancel two of its scheduled flights for 15 October, resulting in the record low number.

For a while, Ryanair remained the biggest airline in Hungary by maintaining 8-10 flights a day in September. Ryanair did not adjust quickly to the rapid drop in booking. For this year’s winter season, Ryanair is going to operate two-thirds of its flights, but these will take off much less frequently, and most of the Budapest routes have been cancelled (about one third will remain).

Wizz Air was quick to cancel the majority of their flights in September; only two remained from the original 13 flights they wanted to take off daily from Budapest Airport. Now, there are only one or two Wizz Air flights a day; most of their aeroplanes remain on the ground.

For one day, Lufthansa became the most excellent service provider at Budapest Airport, which still operates its two Budapest-Frankfurt flights and one Budapest-München flight from Monday to Friday. Air France-KLM counts three flights also with two Budapest-Amsterdam and one Budapest-Paris flight.

Budapest Airport cut its capacity for the winter season to 40%, which is 20% less than last year. Several flights to and from Budapest are being cancelled, and the ones that were cancelled over the previous few weeks are likely to remain withdrawn in November and most probably for the entire winter season.

This means that until March, passengers will not be able to fly from Budapest Airport to Cork, Amman, Sicily, Nurnberg, Sevilla, Valencia, and to the Gran Canary Island.

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Source: www.forbes.hu