BUDAPEST, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Budapest Airport handled close to 15 million passengers in 2018, a record high, the airport said here on Wednesday in a press release.
"Budapest Airport handled 14,867,491 arriving and departing passengers in 2018, almost 1.8 million more than in 2017, representing an annual growth rate of 13.5 percent," the airport announced.
"This increase is making the capital city airport of Hungary the fastest growing airport in the Central Eastern European region. Solid growth figures are the basis of the long-term airport development plans of Budapest Airport which envisage investment of no less than 700 million euros into the airport infrastructure in upcoming years, including a brand new terminal building," the airport added.
In 2018, Budapest Airport offered 134 destinations (in 121 cities) in 48 countries by 45 airlines - the aviation connectivity of Hungary has never been this extensive, according to the airport.
In 2019 the number of new destinations is expected to grow further, LOT will open daily two flights to London City Airport in February, Transavia will fly to Nantes (France), Ryanair will have Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy), Bari (Italy), and Seville (Spain) in the summer of 2019, and China Eastern are expected to confirm a new flight from Shanghai to Budapest from June.
"Budapest Airport already invested more than 450 million euros into developing and modernizing the airport and its infrastructure in the last 12 years. The flagship project was the construction of a new central terminal building called SkyCourt connecting Terminal 2A and 2B with state-of-the-art passenger security control and baggage systems," the statement concluded.
