The first American Boeing 767-300 intercontinental aircraft is planned to land at Budapest Airport on 4 April 2011. This is part of the global flight development plan, the details of which and of the trans-Atlantic cooperation of American Airlines, British Airways and Iberia Airlines were announced in London this afternoon.

A piece of news closely linked to the announcement in London is that American airlines shall connect their hub in New York John F Kennedy airport to the capital of Hungary by a daily flight commencing in April 2011. As member of the One World airline association, American Airlines considers Budapest an important destination in East Europe, as passengers may continue their journeys using the network of Malév, another member of One World, from here to further destinations.

Reservations for the Budapest-New York flight may be made from next week on, while Malév is preparing the so-called code-share agreement also for this flight, thus its passengers can use the network of American Airlines directly and at favorable prices.

The new trans-Atlantic flights were announced in London following the decisions of both the American and the European Union competition authorities approving the trans-Atlantic business cooperation of American Airlines, British Airways and Iberia. This means a total of 91 flights a day under the flag of One World. This also means that a strong competitor will face the two other major airline associations, Sky Team (Air France/KLM, Delta, Aeroflot, CSA etc.) and Star Alliance (Lufthansa, SAS, Continental, United, Air Canada, Austrian, Swiss etc.) on their trans-Atlantic routes.

The Budapest Airport airline development team has been working hard to add new overseas flights to the routes of the Hungarian capital for more than two years. Jost Lammers, CEO of Budapest Airport welcomed the achievement after personally being involved in the negotiations and noted the contributions made to this success by the Hungarian National Tourism Organization and Malev. “The vision of just a few people in the alliance and network planning team at American Airlines lifted the profile of Budapest within their Fort Worth headquarters as being a One World hub with significant growth potential and we are delighted with their confirmation of this big step.”

Director Aviation Kam Jandu who has been working with his colleagues to realize this project since 2009 said, “Adding another long haul carrier is an achievement in itself under the present circumstances of aviation, but more than that, the appearance of a major One World carrier in Budapest further broadens the offer, and sends a strong indication to other airlines on the market that it is worth putting the Hungarian capital on their list of destinations.”

Based on their business data in the first six months of 2010, American Airlines is the fourth largest airline in the world, which, together with its American subsidiary, American Eagle, serves 250 destinations with a huge fleet of 851 aircraft. The base of the company is at Forth Worth, Texas, which is the eighth busiest airport globally (with 56 million passengers in 2009), but it also has important centers at JFK New York, Chicago O’Hare, Los Angeles and Miami. Besides their inland flights in the US, American Airlines is traditionally very strong in the Caribbean and the Latin-American regions."

Source: Budapest Airport