Experts of Budapest Airport are beginning to be optimistic: they think that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and aviation is starting to fly high again.

The summer season has performed quite well at Budapest Airport: in July they have registered 797.558 passengers, in August it was 843.336 while in September 769.645 people have departed or arrived through all three terminals. The summer three months thus brought 2.4 million passengers, the same number as registered in the best-ever year of 2007 when the annual passenger number reached 8.7 millions. This year’s statistics will be somewhat less due to the effect of the Icelandic volcano eruption in April this year that have paralyzed air traffic for almost two weeks all over Europe.

The summer season traffic has put to test both the airport facilities and the personnel working there, on a number of days Budapest Airport terminals were working to their maximum capacity or almost beyond. One of the reasons is the Schengen/non-Schengen separation which effectively halves the throughput of Terminal 2. Also: due to the tightening of the security procedures by the EU have slowed down the passenger security procedure though the equipment installed there two years ago is state-of-the-art by any standards. (For this reason Budapest Airport has to apologize to all passengers who have had to experience longer waiting at peak times in this period).

The traditional (or scheduled) airlines that mostly use Terminal 2 have significantly increased their load factor which is a clear sign of recovery in the aviation sector. In connection with this Kam Jandu, Aviation Director of Budapest Airport has said that „against all the difficulties we face in delivering our services we see that aviation has started to recover after the crisis.

The growth in traffic and load factor by many airlines clearly indicates this. We also see that the tightened security procedures introduced by the EU have little or no impact at all on the overall performance of the airport. Judging by the excellent numbers we see now for the summer season I want to thank all our partners and passengers sincerely”.

Due to the increased demand Budapest Airport has decided not to adjust the number of its security staff to the lower traffic during the winter/Christmas season so as to support the increased traffic of airlines that are behind the growth. Budapest Airport will be able to more than double its throughput capacity in passenger security next spring with opening of SkyCourt (Terminal 2) where 12 state-of-the-art lanes will be available to travelers."

Source: Budapest Airport