DATA SPOTLIGHT: Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport

6 May, 2020

This year The Blue Swan Daily will feature some of the leading airlines, airports and country markets for air travel. Here, using the extensive profile insights available to CAPA - Centre for Aviation members, we deliver a data snapshot on Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport, a capital city gateway that had seen tremendous growth over the second half of the past decade.

When it comes to recovering from a crisis the main air gateway into Hungary has recent experience. The overnight collapse of national carrier Malev in Feb-2012 left it devoid of much of its connectivity and came at a time significant infrastructure investments had been made to support its hub-and-spoke business model.

The airport, buoyed by Budapest's growth as a destination for both business and leisure travel, quickly and successfully managed to backfill the last capacity and add more. This was mainly facilitated by the LCCs, which today are supporting the airport's recovery from the global Covid-19 pandemic.

It is fair to say that Ferenc Liszt International Airport has not been hit as hard as many other capital city gateways, but weekly capacity did fall to just 22,500 seats for the week commencing 20-Apr-2020. But the resumption of services by its largest operator, Wizz Air, has now seen capacity rise over consecutive weeks with over 140,000 seats scheduled for the current week, rising to around 180,000 planned by the end of May-2020.

This may be around half of the levels the airport had expected, but is an encouraging sign that Budapest may have again quickly turned the corner from another major crisis.

ABOUT
Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport (BUD) is the international gateway to Hungarian capital, Budapest. The privately owned airport hosts domestic, regional and international passenger and cargo services from over 35 airlines.

NETWORK MAP (as at 04-May-2020)

GLOBAL RANKING (as at 04-May-2020)

DESTINATIONS (as at 04-May-2020)

ANNUAL PASSENGER TRAFFIC (2010 - 2020YTD)

MONTHLY PASSENGER TRAFFIC AND SEASONALITY IN DEMAND (2015 - 2020YTD)

ANNUAL CAPACITY (2012-2020*)(NOTE:The values for this year are at least partly predictive up to 6 months and may be subject to change)

WEEKLY INTERNATIONAL CAPACITY (2017-2020*)NOTE:*the values for this year are at least partly predictive up to six months and may be subject to change.