Budapest Airport: All development commitments fulfilled

The centerpiece of the airport developments is the SkyCourt, which has increased passenger service quality and the capacity of Budapest Airport to an estimated 10 million passengers/year in its present form, and has a further 50% enhancement capacity with further developments in the future. After the handover of the SkyCourt on 27 March 2011, the development team of Budapest Airport together with KÉSZ, the main contractor of the project, continued the internal refurbishment of Terminals 2A and 2B, which were completed this summer before the start of the holiday travel season. The investment program of Budapest Airport has created thousands of jobs in the construction industry in Hungary for years and after the opening of new airport facilities, further new jobs were created in the aviation, tourism, retail and catering industries of the country.

Besides the SkyCourt, Budapest Airport developed a state-of-the-art new airport security and surveillance system, a new baggage handling facility, more than 80,000 square meters of apron area (where aircraft are parked), improved runway and taxiway systems, developed the airport’s IT system and built new roads and parking areas. Budapest Airport completed its development program one-and-a-half years earlier than envisaged by the relevant agreements. The detailed progress report was handed over to MNV, the Hungarian National Asset Management Company, on 25 July 2012.

“Budapest Airport has proven to be a reliable partner in managing and developing the national airport and the gateway to Hungary. During the most critical times of the financial crisis and the collapse of Malév, the airport continued to fulfill its commitments and to invest into expanding and upgrading the airport infrastructure and improving service quality,” said Jost Lammers, the CEO of Budapest Airport. He added: “On top of this, prior to the Malév grounding, traffic growth and considerable tax payments were delivered and more than a thousand new jobs have been created at the airport since 2007. It is disappointing to experience that all these achievements are not acknowledged, as recent developments suggest. Budapest Airport, along with the aviation and tourism industry, has been punished with a land tax increase of more than 230%. Furthermore, exactly 6 months after the Malév collapse, the coveted traffic rights protected by the bilateral agreements of the Hungarian state have still not been awarded to new carriers. Also, new development and investment projects that the airport operator wants to carry out with the involvement of third parties are blocked due to bureaucracy and lack of interest by the Ministry of National Development. Our intended projects could add up to over 50 million euros and create several hundred new jobs when the country and region needs it most.”

The latest traffic forecast projects an approximately 10-13 decrease in passenger traffic for 2012 at Budapest Airport, while practically all transfer traffic has been lost (-99%). Air traffic movements are down by 20.2%, i.e. are at the level of the year 2002. The market share of the low cost carriers has gone up from 26 % last year to 53 % in July 2012.

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