PHOTOS: Wizz Air left around 150 Hungarian football fans in France

Fradi, the reigning champion and one of the most prestigious Hungarian football clubs, played the second matchday of the Europa League group stage against AS Monaco on Thursday evening. Of course, many fans travelled there with their club, and their effort was not in vain. Fradi defeated the home team 0 to 1. But many fans could not travel home because of the Hungarian budget airline Wizz Air. Below, you may read the details.

Football fans in panic

At least one hundred Hungarian fans were stuck in Monaco, one of the world’s most expensive places after their flight was cancelled. The reason is the nationwide strike of airport employees in France. Interestingly, today even the railway workers joined the strike.

A fan talking to csakfoci.hu, a Hungarian football news website, said that his family called him during halftime telling him their flight was cancelled due to the strike. There were two kinds of supporters in the match: the “B-centre” had the radicals while other fans occupied seats in various parts of the stadium. Panic started among the radicals in the heat of the match. They feared they would not be able to get home, so they started to communicate on Facebook, helping each other with information, and travel options.

Read also: Hungary’s Wizz Air aims to be the dominant passenger carrier for the Qatar FIFA World Cup

Here are some photos of the Fradi football fans in Monaco marching on the match day to the stadium:

Wizz Air did not provide proper help

Based on his estimate, around 100-150 fans could not fly back to Hungary that night with their Wizz Air plane.

“We came out with the Wednesday flight of Wizz Air together with many Fradi supporters. Originally, we would have travelled back on Friday, but the airline offered a ticket only for Monday, and we would have to pay for our accommodation”, he said. The situation was chaotic, everybody wanted to get home that night, but they could only book tickets for 1,000-1,400 EUR per person. Fradi fans were happy they won and tried to help those stuck in Monaco, the victim added.

Fradi football fans in Budapest. Photo: Instagram/GroupamaArena

He said some travelled to Genova by train and then continued their journey to Bologna to watch the home team’s Saturday Serie A match. Afterwards, they will travel to Rome, heading back to Budapest from the Italian capital.

However, most people did not calculate the chaos and did not prepare to remain in Monaco, so they are without proper accommodation. That is partly because prices in Monaco are much higher than in Hungary.

Featured image: illustration