Wizz Air will offer two new destinations and restart three previous flights from Debrecen International Airport, representatives of the government, the city and the airline announced at a press conference in Debrecen on Thursday.
Tamás Vargha, State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said to the journalist after the event that, the state helped to start the flights with 300 million forints, in the flight development tender announced to support the activities of the air carriers, Debrecen airport won this amount for this purpose.
At the briefing, Tamás Vargha mentioned that the airline has been operating flights from Debrecen since 2012 and that its base has expanded significantly in recent years. The development of the airport and the operation of Wizz Air have greatly contributed to the fact that more and more international companies have chosen and are choosing Debrecen as their investment location, he added.
He explained that Hajdú-Bihar and Debrecen have become the big winners of the dynamically growing investment interest in recent years. Last year, 42 of the investment projects in this system were implemented in the region, worth about 2 billion euros, which meant the preservation and creation of 10,000 jobs, the Secretary of State stressed.
András Sebők, Chief Operating Officer of Wizz Air Hungary Ltd., said
the two new flights to Brussels-Charleroi and Kiev are scheduled to depart from 14-15 December, the previously well-functioning Tel Aviv and Moscow flights may resume from late October to early November, and to Santorini in Greece this summer.
Wizz Air will resume flights from Debrecen to Moscow and Tel Aviv
At the same time, nine flights from Debrecen will be available again, added the company’s operations director.
According to him, Debrecen performed best in Wizz Air’s network in terms of service accuracy and availability, which is an outstanding result after the coronavirus epidemic.
Due to the pandemic, the flight performance had to be reduced to a minimum, which is why the restoration of the popular flights and the addition of new points to the operation is very good news – said András Sebők. He indicated that with the new flights, Wizz Air will be able to add about 75,000 new seats to the flight capability this year.
At the briefing, László Papp, Mayor of Debrecen, reminded that after the epidemic situation, the airport could be restarted this summer. Of the previous destinations, flights to London, Paris, Mallorca and Cyprus resumed for the first time, and experience shows that there is growing interest.
The destinations of Tel Aviv and Moscow have already been flights that have been extremely important in the tourist life of the region, the mayor stressed. According to László Papp, after the launch of the aircraft, the number of guest nights spent by Israeli and Russian tourists has multiplied compared to the previous data, and a similar increase is expected from the new flight to Kyiv.
Last year, during the pandemic, Debrecen Airport had slightly more than 120,000 passengers, which is significantly lower than the peak of 600,000 registered in 2019.
MTI
Photo: MTI / Zsolt Czeglédi
