“Wizz Air will be launching new flights to Kazan from Budapest in its winter schedule, while the airline’s A320 aircraft will be taking off every day towards Târgu Mureș (Marosvásárhely) from the end of October”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó announced on Monday in Budapest.

The Minister said it is in Hungary’s fundamental interests to have rapid and efficient links to the world. “The nation’s borders to not correspond to the country’s borders, the economy is open, and 86.5 percent of GDP is provided by exports, and accordingly timely transport is extremely important”, he emphasised.

Mr. Szijjártó cited national politicy interests to justify the expansion of available routes to include Târgu Mureș. As he explained, it is important that the maintaining of relations with cross-border Hungarians is as easy and unhindered as possible.

With the new flights, Wizz Air will be providing 132 thousand places on its air passenger services from the end of October instead of the current 38 thousand.

With relation to the launch of the direct air passenger service to Kazan, the Minister said that negotiations have been ongoing with Russia since 2015 and the Hungarian state published a tender for the performance of the service, which Wizz Air won, following which the bilateral aviation treaty was amended, which the Russian party also authorised, and accordingly the new service will be taking off on Wednesdays and Sundays beginning in late October. Mr. Szijjártó also drew attention to the fact that, amongst others, Tatarstan is an important market for Hungarian agricultural products.

At the press conference, head of Wizz Air József Váradi pointed out that the company’s air passenger service to Târgu Mureș has been operating for over 10 years, but the two flights-a-week were only enough to serve a small section of the population; the new service that will be taking off every day will also provide a good solution for business travellers, however, in addition to tourist traffic.

The airline’s CEO stressed that Kazan will be the third Russian city to become available within Wizz Air’s network, and the company will continue to initiate the opening of eastern routes in future. “Western Europe is becoming increasingly saturated, but Eastern Europe is still relatively undiscovered”, he pointed out.

At the press conference, in reply to a question Mr. Szijjártó said it is important for Hungary to be directly accessible from as many destinations as possible, but everyone must abide by regulations, and Budapest Airport must provide a suitable level of service quality.

(MTI)