Friday, February 03, 2012

No more Malev flights to the Balkans ... or anywhere else

This morning the Hungarian airline Malév announced that it is to cease operations immediately.

This development will leave some large gaps in the air transport map of Southeast Europe, at least in the short term. Malév's flights linked all the Balkan capital cities, and some smaller places as well, to Budapest and onwards to the global Oneworld network.

On a personal note I am sorry to see Malév's Dublin-Budapest link disappear as I used it a number of times at the start or end of trips to the Balkans - on one occasion taking a connecting flight from Budapest on a tiny aircraft to the equally tiny airport at Targu Mures in Romania.

The news comes just a few days after the bankruptcy of Spanair. The collapse of the Barcelona-based airline is of much less relevance to the Balkans, but it does mean the loss of a route from Barcelona to Belgrade and of summer services to Croatia.

3 comments:

Bulgarian Excursions said...

It is a pitty that Malev as one of the biggest airlines in Europe has bankrupted. Tourist and flights market is really tough and it is affected also by the crisis.

Slavistix Translation Services said...

A big tour operator in Russia went also bankrupt. I think the situation with Malev is going to be similar, because they were the big supplier of transport, and now there is a big hole in the market, without other companies to catch up. Tough economy and poor management I guess.

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