Europe’s largest discount airline Ryanair will withdraw from Budapest at the end of October, as talks with Budapest Airport to have fees lowered failed, László Tamás, marketing director said yesterday.
The Irish airline asked the Ferihegy airport operator to cut its navigation and ground handling fees. Both of these services are run by independent companies and outside the purview of the airport operator, however, Népszabadság reported.
Ryanair currently flies to 4 destinations from Budapest but would have added 25 new routes over the next 5 years – bringing Hungary 2 million passengers and €270 million in revenue – if it had seen fees lowered.
The airline served 400,000 passengers two years ago, but carried only 180,000 passengers in and out of Budapest in 2009.
Ryanair had been considering the move for a month in light of a 10% rise in handling and navigation fees.
Bed decision for Hungary!
Another international company that leaves Hungary, less and less cities can be now reached from Budapest, what a disaster. They kicked out skyeurope (pushing it to bankruptcy), now they kick out ryanair (who cannot care less of Hungary): I wonder how much did malev and wizzair (run by former malev managers) pay the airport and handling bosses to get this nice results… what a sick country…
This is no great loss to Budapest. Ryanair’s flight times are crap and they only serve Budapest two days a week. Their pricing policy is also very far from transparent and they do their level best to hold airports to ransom to squeeze concessions out of them. Good on Budapest for holding firm.
Having to pay for (compulsory) online check-in – what’s that all about?!
Good riddance!
Even were BpA to improve its fees, it won’t be able
to improve the macros such that Hungarians will be
able to afford flying or the passenger numbers of
tourists brought to HU (one would have to argue even
more creatively if they think these are business
people coming to HU to do deals). Either way, it’s
not just BpA that needs to think about what it can
do, but the rest of the HU, Zrt – which lies far
outside of those in the control tower at Ferihegy.
I cant stand Ryanair but they do fly from the regional airport close to my home in the UK so I am sorry to see them go.
JEM can’t stand Ryanair but he uses them to fly from his nearest airport. Ahhhhhh. That is surely the point. Sorry but this is another disaster for Budapest and our declining tourism. Not only do tourists often get ripped off when they do arrive, but now we make every effort to stop that (arriving here) in the first place. Now that my reduce the foreign related complaints about being ripped off!!!
Ahhhh.. now we see the cunning trick. Bring in less tourists and tourist related complaints will drop. Clever.
Michael O’Leary : nobody said ryanair is great, but it brings tourists and wealth like any other airline. Less airlines=less GDP. I also inform you that wizzair too has now compulsory online check-in (or pay 10 euro). Moreover, I have no idea how you can tell if a pricing policy for a discount airline is transparent or not, because nobody can do that. We (users) can only tell if we like the price or not, and we tell by purchasing or not. It is called free market. But when you have a monopoly (or oligopoly) as in Budapest, with just a few discount airlines, you have no choice, so you are less free. It’s just that simple. Your idea that this is “good for Budapest” shows that you are either Hungarian or have been living here for too long…
Ryanair are a right bunch of crooks both on their pricing and their operating methods, but they do provide a service which will be missed – we use them reluctantly since they allow visits to family to/from UK regional airports.
Their tricky nature is revealed in the fact that they appear to be saying that passenger numbers have halved? Oh yeah, probably because they halved the number of flights…all the ones we travel on are full.
Do not believe their ‘protestations’, but regret the fact that another service has been lost between UK and Hungary – it was good for both sides. Lets hope that Easyjet pick the routes back up (Ryanair took them over).
First Sarmellek now Budapest, I use ryanair from Bristol at least five times a year , now how do I get there ???
FANTASTIC !!! Yes I’m from the UK; yes I fly the Bristol to BP T1 route several times a year; yes I run a business which helps HU companies export their products across the rest of Europe – or, as it now looks, I did…
No I’m not particularly a fan of Ryanair (sneaky and aggressive – an interesting customer care strategy guys !), but if I’m honest I don’t think my business would tolerate a 10% hike in supplier rates either so in some ways I can sympathise with O’Leary’s position…
Hungary is a great country, but difficult to do business with. The message which HU sends to the world is “we are right; end of negotiation” (check the illegal car import registration tax policy for details). O’Leary offered to bring huge amounts of new business, T1 refused to budge… So now what ?? HU loses out, again…
I and many like me will continue to trade, we’ll just do it within the more accessible nations throughout Europe. Understand that we don’t care about the ex-Malev conspiracy thoerys, we just want reasonably priced and reliable transport links !
I guess all that remain now is to get all our people (including my partner) out of HU while there’s still a route that will carry us.
Sianara Budapest, it was fun while it lasted…
How about building a fast train system to Vienna and Prague?
I don’t believe that air transport is the future. Cheap oil is over … The pressure to reduce CO2 emissions will become fierce during the next ten years.
Hungary is poorly prepared with its big car fixation.
@Anon.. Who pays for the fast train?
@Anon.. Who pays for the fast train?
Rolrox at August 27, 2010 9:06 AM
—
If State Money cannot do it, lease out the building and operation of a new High Speed line to a private consortium that get 20 years free usage (they must provide a defined minimum basic service during this time, but pricing is their decision)
Worked in other parts of the world and keep the politicians out
@Viking. A bond to build a high speed rail link is a
great idea. But who would do it?
Rolrox,
The railroad should be built with public money and then leased to anyone who wants to provide service on it. That maximizes competition.
That’s the ideal way to do it. Public ownership of bottleneck resources coupled with private service providers.
Well its done..Ryanair flew out of Budapest for the last time yesterday.
Now rumour has it that they will be back to FlyBalaton in the spring…this is what we have been hoping for in the Heviz – Keszthely area for the last two years. Lets all get together to make it work properly this time!!!!
@PeterC:
I just read in the German Balaton-Zeitung (november edition) that they expect (or let’s say hope for) 80.000 to 100.000 passengers next year.
In 2012 they hope for around 120.000 – that was about the number of passengers in 2008 when Ryanair had a full schedule of flights.
They can’t do this with flights to Germany alone, so your speculations have a base …
Well, if they offer these flights at “good” prices, I’m sure my family will use them – either them flying in from London or us going on holiday to visit them in London …
And I think there’ll be more people flying to the UK. So now we have to wait until spring – or until more news gets out.