Car going to the UK?

Rural Life Hungary wrote:

.... Will be booking flights Sunday morning so if you can help please let me know before then.

Many thanks

Just don't try booking on Malev.....

Just don't try booking on Malev.....

Glad I'm unorganised enough not to have booked in advance or I might be sitting here wondering when I would be refunded :-(
Ended up booking with Wizzair this morning as prices were increasing by the hour - gutted that Ryanair's 9.99 flights don't start until the 17th....

Rural Life Hungary wrote:

Just don't try booking on Malev.....

Glad I'm unorganised enough not to have booked in advance or I might be sitting here wondering when I would be refunded .......

I also luckily missed Malev's demise. I was literally looking at booking a flight the night before.

It's a shame Malev has gone. I quite liked flying with them. More so than BA for example. They also had reasonable flights around the region.

I suppose a new Hungarian airline will appear again soon after buying the assets of Malev at a knock down price.

fluffy2560 wrote:

I suppose a new Hungarian airline will appear again soon after buying the assets of Malev at a knock down price.

Why wouldn't that surprise me? :-)

With no domestic flights I don't really see the point of a national airline. BUD is serviced by lots of airlines for free (without subsidies from my tax money.)

"Creating Jobs" by funneling more money to cronies than the people in the "created jobs" make is an exceptionally destructive form of broken window economy.

szocske wrote:

With no domestic flights I don't really see the point of a national airline. BUD is serviced by lots of airlines for free (without subsidies from my tax money.)...

Malev had bilateral agreements with other countries like Ukraine. It used to act as a feeder airline into its partner's network. Particularly, if you came from the USA and wanted to get to say, Tirana, Malev picked up those last sectors through its bilateral agreements regionally in return for other countries national airlines being able to service Budapest. This is why you got things like a Ukrainian airline operating the morning flight and Malev operating the evening flight back. Split the route and share the revenue. Those rights will need to be renegotiated now Malev is no more.

I personally supported Malev considerably. In 2011 I flew 30 - 35 times with Malev alone. There's no-one flying to Tirana or the Middle East countries like Lebanon except via other countries. It will double flight times by having to route through other countries. That's money that could have been injected into the Hungarian economy and now will go to other airlines like Turkish (who want to be a world sized super carrier).

Malev also accounted for about 30% of the traffic at Budapest airport (9 million total passengers, 3 million via Malev). The knock on effect in the local economy will be significant.

I suppose you know more about how these things work so I stand corrected.
Since I never few in those directions, Malev was never the cheapest or most convenient option so in my 10+ years of flying to/from BUD I never sat on a Malev flight.

I guess the country does lose the convenience of those direct flights and all the transit traffic to those destinations. I'm sure all direct traffic needs will be picked up by other airlines though.

szocske wrote:

....I guess the country does lose the convenience of those direct flights and all the transit traffic to those destinations. I'm sure all direct traffic needs will be picked up by other airlines though.

Sure, other airlines will pick up the traffic but the routes will not use the Budapest hub. They'll probably use Vienna, Frankfurt or Rome. That's all lost business. Malev had a niche flying to the surrounding countries.

I am really fed up about it. I fly around the region and further afield all the time and it's really going to be a complete nuisance. I also lost my Malev Gold card lounge access!