Hungarian Hydroplane landed at Budapest Airport for the first time

For the first time in the 73-year history of Liszt Ferenc International Airport, a Hungarian hydroplane has landed at the airport. The Cessna 206 Amphibian, presented by Aeroexpress last year, arrived at Ferihegy on the occasion of Transport Culture Day.

In the more than seven decades of Budapest Airport‘s history, many different types of aircraft have visited the airport – including some of the world’s largest – but it was on 11 May that a Hungarian seaplane first rolled onto the concrete in front of Terminal 1. The Aeroexpress amphibian, which can operate from water and land, arrived for a special occasion.

The Aeropark Aviation Museum, Aeroexpress and BASe Airlines joined the national series of events organised by the Transport Science Association, the Day of Transport Culture, so that hundreds of children and adults could learn more about aviation on this day. The Embraer 120-passenger aircraft on display in front of the airline hangar and the Cessna 206 amphibian drew large flocks of visitors to the airport.

During the ‘Secrets of the Deck’ programme organised by Aeropark, Tamás Darida and Márton Széchey, instructor captains, and Zsuzsanna Szombati, flight attendant, acquainted the visitors with crew members, the route to the cockpit and the ‘invisible’ tasks of pilots and stewardesses on board. The experts explained the different systems of the aircraft, the cockpits and the specificities of the types.

The Aeroexpress brand name is 100 years old this year, as it was the name under which the airline started operations in 1923, taking off from the Danube before Gellért Hill and carrying passengers to Lake Balaton and Vienna,” said Dániel Somogyi-Tóth, the airline’s founder. The company started operations last year to run flights with Embraer 120s to destinations in the Carpathian Basin that are difficult to reach by car or train, in cooperation with BASe Airlines. Aeroexpress Regional currently operates four pairs of flights a week between Budapest and Cluj-Napoca. Their other priority is to re-establish the use of water-based air travel in Hungary. Last year, the preparatory phase was launched, during which the seaplane was used for hundreds of hours of test flights on the Adony section of the Danube and three points on Lake Balaton. Since then, the Cessna 206 amphibian has become one of the main attractions at the national flying days.