Ferihegy Airport – the beginning of the end?

Not many things seem to be working in Hungary these days. With a right wing government that seems to make a sport of creating enemies all around it, from the European Union to the IMF, the small Central-European country has now reached a point where the economy has nowhere to go but down. This of course has an impact also on air transport and the airport of Budapest.
Ferihegy Airport (which was renamed Liszt Ferenc International Airport by a name-change crazy city administration) was hit simultaneously by the crisis in the aviation world and the collapse of the Hungarian economy. The demise of Malev, the once-proud Hungarian National airline earlier this year left the airport with a huge gap in revenues. It also started a chain of events that is nothing short of amazing.
When long-loss making Malev disappeared from the scene almost overnight, they set a record as the only airline from former communist times to go bankrupt. The result of many years of mismanagement and a total lack of vision on the part of its various owners, the bankruptcy nevertheless opened up the field for other players, particularly low-fare companies, to take Budapest by storm.
Wizzair, Easy Jet and Ryanair were on the spot right away, ready to take up some of the slack left by the exit of the legacy carrier.

Wizzair is a Hungarian home-grown low-fare airline, run by a former executive of Malev who, it is rumored, harbored quite a few grudges against his former employer and who is in fact credited by many with doing Malev in by telling the EC about some illegal state aid given to Malev earlier. Whether this is true or not, Wizz has profited handsomely from the disappearance of the national carrier. Wizzair has recently acquired practically all of Malev’s operating rights to destinations outside the EU, a real panacea for this dynamic low-fare outfit.
I think Ryanair had its expansion plans for Budapest all cooked up and ready for implementation long before the Malev bankruptcy was announced. They new it was coming and wanted to be ready. At least this is the most logical conclusion one can draw from the speed with which they arrived at Ferihegy, ready to create a new base. Initially, airport management was at a loss in the face of the outlandish and aggressive demands of the Irish carrier but in time they understood that the world around them had changed. Not for the better may be, but change it did for sure. Nevertheless, at one point the deal almost fell through when border protection insisted that the flight crew leave the aircraft for passport control…on a 20 minute turnaround. But in time they too grew up to the new realities and found a solution acceptable to the airlines.
Originally, Ferihegy was operating with two terminals. T1 was in fact the old airport building and it was the home of the low-fare guys. T2 had a part reserved for Malev and a part for the other legacy carriers. When Malev flew west, never to return, their section of T2 became a ghost-town like empty shell…

Seeing its falling revenue, airport management decided to close T1 and move the low-fare operation over to T2. Afraid of higher costs, the low-fare guys at first resisted the move but in the end a deal was struck and the transfer completed… with catastrophic results for the passenger experience.
T1 never had airbridges and the aircraft were parked near the building, similar to what we see at many airports or terminals dedicated to the needs and preferences of the low-fare airlines. At such places, the short walk between aircraft and terminal is not an issue, after all, many small airports at holiday destinations call on passengers to use their feet for boarding.
The circumstances at T2 in Ferihegy were of course totally different. There, airbridges were the norm and remote stands were exactly what their name says… they are quite a distance from the terminal itself. In happier times, special buses were used to transport people to their waiting aircraft if, for some reason, it was not at one of the airbridge-served stands. But these were not happier times. The low-fare airlines do not want to pay for frills like airbridges and buses. Passengers have to walk if they want the privilege of low fares…
Budapest airport set a record there too! Shortly after becoming the first airport in the world in modern times that had to close a terminal because they ran out of traffic, they established the world’s first corral for herding low-fare passengers to their aircraft.
Initially, there was no shade or protection from hail or lightning, just the barriers right and left… a sad sight indeed. After a summer of pure passenger misery, they decided to improve the situation. The corrals remain, though now they will be covered. What is more, beer-tent like horrors are being erected where, no doubt, passengers will congregate before embarking on the long trek to their aircraft. That all this required holes to be drilled into the million dollar concrete of the apron where aircraft used to taxi does not seem to bother anyone.

With the loss of Malev and the preponderance of low-fare airlines, the type of passengers using the airport has also shifted away from the five-star type… Ryanair’s clientele is typically the low-budget tourists and the airport’s recently opened Skycourt shopping mall will feel the difference for sure. What is more, this change has an impact also on the occupancy of the many five start hotels scattered all over Hungary. The always somewhat elitist tourist industry did not have the vision or the flexibility to recognize the writing on the wall: nations with serious numbers of tourists are getting rich from the many backpackers rather than the few suites looking for five star elegance.
Ferihegy Airport has had dreams of becoming a regional hub for a long time. For some reason it has never come to pass. While neighboring Vienna thrives, Ferihegy is more and more irrelevant in the big scheme of things. With the old terminal now being used as a kind of convention center and the beer-tents in front of the new terminal, one gets the feeling that things cannot sink much lower…
See lajos’ account of the situation in pictures here.