Budapest Airport: Slow Restart

Life is slowly returning to airports from May; aviation has restarted in several European countries, amidst heightened safety measures. From May 1, traffic has resumed at Budapest Airport as well, albeit only gradually, as more and more airlines announce the relaunch of flights to Budapest. 

According to the latest Airport bulletin, the coronavirus pandemic had the strongest impact on passenger traffic in April, which is clearly visible on the figures. Whilst Budapest Airport handled 1,337,871 passengers in April 2019, this year there were only 9,870 travelers in total last month. Average daily passenger traffic was 44,500 last April; this number was 329 travelers/day in the same month this year, including days when traffic did not reach 180. The number of landings and takeoffs was 10,034 last April; this year, there were only 1129 aircraft movements in the same month.

During the past week (between May 5 and 11), there were a total of 100 arriving and departing flights to and from Budapest Airport, in relation to 16 cities. Several airlines are gradually restarting flights to Budapest Airport in June; services by British Airways to London, Eurowings to Stuttgart, Jet2 to Leeds and Manchester, Qatar Airways to Doha and Swiss to Zürich will be available. From the second month of the summer, Emirates plans to launch a direct Budapest-Dubai flight, and Ryanair just announced that it intends to restart 90% of its route network and most of its bases from the beginning of July.