Thursday, October 1, 2015
Budapest Airport says it is sees potential in the Balkan market, particularly within the former Yugoslavia, and is working on establishing better connections to the region. The Managing Director of Budapest Airport, Jost Lammers, says that, compared with the Malév-era, the position of the airport has somewhat weakened. "The South Balkan region has not been covered by anyone, although there is significant potential. Travellers can currently only reach Podgorica, Sarajevo, Tirana and other Balkan destinations from Budapest via Vienna or Munich. These connections are missing. A feeder or regional airline would need to operate these flights with a fleet of regional turboprop aircraft of smaller capacity". In July, the Macedonian Economy Minister, Valon Saracini, said, “We discussed the opening of direct Wizz Air flights between Skopje and Budapest, as well as charter flights to cater for Hungary’s largest tour operator”. The Minister added that flights to Budapest would allow Macedonian travellers to connect onto Wizz Air’s network of over thirty destinations from the Hungarian capital. Hungary is currently the fifth largest investor in Macedonia. Currently, Budapest Airport is only linked to Belgrade within the former Yugoslavia.
Bad news for Air Serbia.
ReplyDeleteBudapest is going to become the hub that BEG could have been.
ReplyDeleteBUD is well connected by road and rail to Serbia, Croatia and BiH - so not sure what potential he is talking about. JU tried for almost 12mths and couldn't make it work .... it is an LCC market so that is the only potential on offer
ReplyDeleteYeah, no wonder JU failed when they had Budapest on a happy Friday sale for €170!
Delete+1
DeleteActually, they had it for even cheaper .. i once bought a ticket for EUR99 during a super saturday special offer and the flight was half empty .... if you can't fill the flight with such cheao prices, then obviously there is no market
DeleteBut the thing is that €99 is not cheap. It's not cheap because you have a decent enough highway all the way, €50 return door to door minibus and there is even a train which is €30 return. If JU could have brought it down to €60 just like BNX is then this route would have been successful.
DeleteBUD even came to Belgrade a few months ago hoping they could convince JU to stay.
The de facto national carrier of Hungary is becoming the largest airline in Eastern Europe!
ReplyDeleteGo WIZZZ!