Hungary is a fast growing tourism market for China, with last year showing a 19 per cent increase of Chinese visitors travelling to Budapest. In fact, estimates suggest a Chinese diaspora of over 40,000 in Hungary and demand or around 90,000 bi-directional passengers per annum.
The airline, part of the Silk Way Group, first introduced flights between Heydar Aliyev International Airport in Baku and Budapest in March 2014 but strong demand for goods in and out of the European market has seen it switch from the 53-tonne capacity 767-300F to the 113-tonne capacity 747-400Fs.
Greek start-up, SkyGreece will launch services to Canada, with new routes between Athens, Thessaloniki, Zagreb and Budapest to Toronto, following approval from the Greek and Canadian authorities.
Ryanair will be basing an additional Boeing 737-800 at Athens International Airport during summer 2015, increasing its based fleet to four aircraft and plans to double its Athens traffic to approximately 2.2 million passengers per annum.
The low-cost carrier has announced new services from its Budapest base to Hurghada on the East coast of Egypt and Alghero in Sardinia, Italy, for the summer 2015 season.
Air Transat have released their timetable for summer 2015 to include a direct service from Montréal to Budapest, and from St. John’s (Newfoundland and Labrador) to London.
Budapest Airport continues to go from strength to strength and chief commercial officer Kam Jandu says the next target is a direct route to the US, writes Justin Burns for The HUB.
The new daily flight will launch from October 27, 2014 and will be operated using a 278-seat Airbus A330-200 complementing the existing Dubai low-cost offering of Wizz Air and providing an alternative global connection option to the current flights of Qatar Airways via its Doha hub.
Under the revised timetable, Qatar Airways will continue to operate four rotations per week on the Doha – Budapest – Zagreb linked flight routing using an Airbus A321, but every Monday, Friday and Saturday will operate separate flights to both Budapest and Zagreb.
It has been a tough few years for the airport, Hungary’s largest air gateway, following the collapse of national carrier Malev in February 2012, but the past year, during which it hosted the previous Routes Europe forum, has seen it continue to back fill the lost capacity and introduce links into new markets.