Polish airline LOT will be launching a new air passenger route between Budapest and London early next year, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó and CEO of LOT Rafał Milczarski announced in Budapest on Thursday.

The first flight of the new route, which will be using Embraer E190 jetliners, will take off from Budapest on 18 February next year, and will by flying between Budapest and London City International Airport twice-a-day, in the morning and afternoon.

At the press conference held to announce the launch of the new route, Mr. Szijjártó stressed that in the new global economic environment links play a more important role than they used to, and for this reason the launch of the new route is of key importance, adding that negotiations are continuously ongoing with LOT in the interests of making up for the competitive disadvantage posed by the lack of a Hungarian national airline.

According to Mr. Szijjártó, British enterprises employ 51 thousand people in Hungary, and the volume of bilateral trade between the two countries exceeds 6 billion euros-a-year. “The new route will make the maintaining of business links between the two countries significantly easier, and will also contribute to enabling relations between Hungary and Great Britain to remain as close as possible following Britain’s exit from the European Union”, he explained.

Rafał Milczarski stressed that the two airliners that will be flying the route will be based in Budapest, and the airline is also planning to hire Hungarian pilots from 2019.

He noted that LOT is continuously analysing and monitoring the Hungarian market, and their experiences so far are extremely favourable.

Chief Commercial Officer of Budapest Airport Kam Jandu spoke about the fact that 15 percent of the 13 million passengers served by the airport in 2017 travelled to the United Kingdom and 12 percent specifically to London, which is the most popular travel destination for people flying from Budapest. The launching of the new route means there will be more flights from the Hungarian capital to London than from Vienna or Prague, he added.

London City International Airport (LCY) was built on the banks of the Thames in 1987 and operates with a single 1.5 kilometre runway, as a result of which it operates with restricted traffic in view of existing wound pollution regulations. The largest airliner it is capable of accepting is the Bombardier CS100 regional jetliner. The airport was used by 4.5 million passengers last year, most of them business travellers.

(MTI)