FB Airport has been granted the license to operate Fly Balaton airport in Sármellék for 50 years, with an option to extend it for another 50 years, according to an agreement between the local municipalities and the company owned by Hungarian property developer SDC Group.
The company will pay Ft 6 million a year and a percentage of the turnover to the local governments of Sármellék and Zalavár, which own the airport building and equipment. The airport will reopen on April 1.
A tender to operate the airport was announced after the liquidation of the Irish owner, Cape Clear Aviation (CCA). The airport served 150,000 passengers in 2008, which dropped to around 15,000 after budget airline Ryanair moved out. CCA ran the airport from December 2004 until autumn 2008.
SDC expects passenger traffic to return to 2008 levels within two years and projects an annual investment in operation of Ft 500 million. It also won the tender to lease for Ft 1 billion a 200-hectare site adjacent to the airport, which was formerly an army barracks.
SCD Group, as an operator of camping sites and other property developments around Lake Balaton, could idly watch the shutdown of the airport, CEO Gábor Tomcsányi said in an interview to Népszabadság.
A one- or two-year delay would have been a serious handicap: the airport would have been completely written off as a possible destination, leading to decline in foreign travellers to Lake Balaton, Tomcsányi said.
The contract could be signed within weeks.
When are the viable commercial airlines going to start flying to Lake Balaton from the UK and Germany on a regular basis.
I hope it is some time soon for all our sakes?
50 years? Bizarre.
It certainly is a comforting thought; once again being able to travel from Balaton to UK, NL, DE! But who’s gonna fly here (and back) that’s the (big) question.
That airport has no business of being in business. Shut it down, for good.
Shut you down for good, Hugica. Are you a mischivous elf – picking the petals from flowers
and wiping your arse with them.?
“Bungling Balaton Airport” has got absolutely no business of being in business. Keep it shut down for good.
FlyBalaton is an excellent airport and processed large numbers of passengers from the UK and Germany in recent years.
It is an airport not a business. The airport is strategically placed and is essential for the revival at Lake Balaton.
The business side is getting competitive airlines
to operate at Flybalaton on a sound commercial basis.
Funds which are earmarked for the running of the airport must not be allowed to disappear in the usual corrupt way.
FlyBalaton is the conduit for bringing tourists thus creating much-needed jobs for a struggling community.
Well done to everyone that has helped in securing the airport’§s future.
Let’s move on and get some traffic flying in and out of FlyBalaton airport at Sarmallék.
There is precious little pecuniary rationale to keep Budapest Airport open, let alone Balaton Airport. They are just money pits. There are perfectly good airports operating in Vienna and Bratislava, that’s the way to go.
@Hugica:
So what’s the rationale to have two airports at the twin cities of Vienna and Bratislava ?
Sármellék is about 200 km from Vienna or Budapest …
“So what’s the rationale to have two airports at the twin cities of Vienna and Bratislava?”
Well, from purely a pecuniary standpoint, it could be as simple that the operators of the Vienna and Bratislava airports are more competent and less kleptomaniac than your typical “Hugarian airport managers” (ha-gha-ha-ha).
Last I heard, the BP Airport is also “loosing money” head over heels — i.e. the incompetent operators and glue-palmed managers steal all the profits. Assuming there is less thievery at the Vienna and Bratislava airports, they would have more of a rationale to keep on serving paying customers than would their Hungo counterparts.