Budapest Airport (BUD) is gearing up to handle more than one million passengers per month during the northern winter 2023-24 season, with 36 airlines providing flights 107 destinations throughout the period.

New connections include Ryanair launching flights to Alicante, Birmingham and Tenerife, while Wizz Air has added Sharm El Sheikh and Cairo in Egypt to its offer, alongside Glasgow and Copenhagen. Iberia has also increased the frequency of its Madrid flights to daily. The winter program follows a summer season when traffic reached about 90% of the airport’s 2019 record.

Speaking to Routes, Balázs Bogáts, Chief Commercial Officer of Budapest Airport, an exhibitor at Routes World 2023 and Routes 360 member, says the airport’s European network has fully recovered and highlights the recovery of routes to China.

“We’re very proud of the Chinese destinations we have, with four destinations already to China, which is very encouraging that we will have further growth,” he says.

Bogáts explains that North American connections are still to come back, with the return of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Toronto being the top priorities.

Anticipating an increase in passenger traffic, Bogáts says the airport’s expansion is well underway. BUD has the capacity to serve more than 16 million passengers annually, while Terminal 3 will swell capacity by a further 5 million.

In addition to infrastructure investments, BUD has focused on quality improvements which saw the airport awarded a four-star rating by SkyTrax, as well as receiving the ACI’s Best Airport award for the 15 to 25 Million Passengers in Europe category.

Seeking to enhance connectivity from Budapest Airport, the organization shares underserved and unserved route opportunities through its Routes 360 membership.