Article from BTNews 8 MAY 2017
Flybe arrives in Budapest
The inaugural flight of Flybe’s three-times-weekly service between the Hungarian capital and Southend was celebrated at Budapest Airport last week as the airport’s fifth direct connection to London.
The airport says it is expecting a 14% year-on-year increase in UK passenger traffic, with up to 1.5m round-trip passengers. Flybe’s link joins a network of other carriers operating existing services to Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton and Stansted, making the London market by far the largest city pair served from Budapest.
Meanwhile, Flybe is continuing its fleet rationalisation after signing a combined commercial arrangement to lease two Embraer E195s to Irish regional carrier Stobart Air. They are the airline’s first jets and join an existing fleet of ATR aircraft.
Stobart is wet-leasing the E195s for up to 20 months, and will base them at Southend operated initially by Flybe with Stobart taking over operations by 1 January.
Flybe said in a statement: “The aircraft will be operated in Flybe branding under the existing franchise agreement between the two companies.
The deal follows negotiations last year for Stobart to be acquired by fellow Irish regional airline CityJet, but talks were broken off in December.
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