Budapest Airport has witnessed the inauguration of three new regular cargo flight operations, seeing the strengthening of the Hungarian gateway’s regional leadership role in air cargo. Welcoming the significant boost of the airport’s cargo flight connectivity and distribution hub role in Central and Eastern Europe, Budapest has launched Wizz Air’s service from Hangzhou, Longhao Airlines’ operation from Zhengzhou, and Ethiopian Airlines’ charter flight from Hong Kong.
Joining the airport’s increasing cargo connections to China, Wizz Air will operate scheduled flights utilizing highly efficient A330Fs of the Hungarian Government and Universal Translink Airline, operating with less noise and emissions. The new direct route reinforces Budapest’s position as a rapidly developing regional cargo gateway in Central and Eastern Europe. Celebrating the important expansion on 15 May, Wizz Air’s operation will link Hungary to the capital of the Zhejiang Province, a major economic and e-commerce hub within China, located just 170km from Shanghai.
On 19 May, the Hungarian capital city welcomed Longhao Airlines. The cargo airline will operate between Budapest and Zhengzhou (CGO) using a B747 freighter, accelerating the development of the airport’s global air cargo route network and bringing new capacities for the BUD-CGO route, which has been operating successfully since 2019 to the rapidly developing cargo gateway in China.
Completing the advancements, Ethiopian Airlines launched a weekly charter service between Budapest and Hong Kong, using the airline’s B777 freighters, with a focus on general cargo and ecommerce commodities.
René Droese, chief development officer, Budapest Airport, comments: “The launch of three new cargo flights is yet another sign of Budapest’s ideal positioning as a cargo hub in CEE, for all airlines and logistics partners. Creating important export-import transportation opportunities for general cargo and e-commerce businesses is at the heart of what we do, and we are strongly committed to developing this business further. Another important advantage of these new flights is that all three are served with large capacity cargo aircraft. This helps us to manage our cargo traffic development in a sustainable way, without a significant increase in air cargo movements.”
Last year, Budapest Airport handled a record cargo volume of 194,000 tons, which was achieved with fewer aircraft movements, with cargo flights down 11.5% compared to 2021.
