Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Budapest Summer Flying

Ferihegy international airport announced new flights for the summer schedule starting this Sunday. I am only hightlighting the budget airlines here, not the mainstream ones. EuroAir, Iberworld and Scandinavian Airlines are expected to launch new flights, but the key word here is 'expected'. Norwegian Air is expanding its range now including flights from Budapest to Copenhagen and Stockholm as new destinations. WizzAir's will now grace Budapest with flights to Madrid and Naples, while at the same time increasing its flights between Budapest and London's Luton. At one point, there were 34 budget airlines flying in and out of Budapest. Some of the budgets went down in history as financial calamities, while others just pulled Budapest from their schedule. The problem here is that although many want to come from points A, B, or C, the planes going back to points A, B, and C are flying half empty. This is not an efficient way to run an airline. In the olden days, SkyEurope announced a summer schedule and then canceled flights. Now, they only fly from here to Trieste, Italy. Recommended, but how often does anyone want to go to Trieste when there is a big world out there? I tried all of the 'recommended' budget airline search engines: Skyscanner, Air Ninja, Air Traffic.EU, and others for a reasonable flight from here to Lithuania. All searches pointed to flyLAL Airlines, but once I arrived on their site, I was greeted with "We regret to inform you that flyLAL – Lithuanian Airlines ceased its operations from 17th of January, 2009." Now I am working on dumping all of my United Airlines miles. All of the frequent flyer newsletters say the miles are at risk due to the airlines financial status. Being all of the airlines are in the same shape, no one may jump in and rescue the United miles like airlines have done in the past. Africa, here we come, I hope.

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