New Boarding Hall at Budapest Airport

A new chapter begins in the life of Budapest Airport from 2020. The first phase of a new, 11,500-square-meter facility serving passengers and providing the same level of comfort as the terminals has opened this Wednesday. The modern Pier 1 – to be fully completed by the summer of 2020 – replacing the earlier basic boarding gates, is the first step in the cooperation between Budapest Airport and the Hungarian government, and also in the long-term development of the airport, a press release by the airport management company says.

With the new facility, the floor space serving the airlines will be nearly quadrupled, increasing from 3,000 square meters to nearly 11,500 square meters. Pier 1 is a heated and air-conditioned, single-story building with an internal height of 5.2 meters. The hall will have eight pedestrian boarding gates (so-called walk-on-walk-off gates), which will be directly connected to the aircraft stands, i.e. passengers will be able to access the aircraft directly from the building. In addition, the hall will also have six bus gates.

The central hall will feature resting and waiting areas, with a food and beverage outlet, three large capacity bathroom blocks and a smokers’ terrace also available to serve the convenience of passengers. The connection to Terminal 2A will be implemented in such a way that passengers will not leave the comfort of the building for a single moment after check-in; they will reach the approximately 120 meter long, spacious, heated/air conditioned corridor leading from the main terminal building to the boarding hall via a connecting building equipped with escalators and elevators.

The construction of the pier costs approximately HUF 8.3 billion (some EUR 25 million), which is financed entirely by Budapest Airport Co. Ltd. Execution works commenced in July 2019, and, in the interest of the earliest possible completion, continued throughout the summer peak season, without disturbing the regular, daily traffic of the airport. According to plan Budapest, Airport will discontinue the operation of the current basic boarding gates on 17 January; from then on, passengers will board their aircraft from the new facility, or, rather, from its completed sections.