newstodate.aero

May 30, 2023 (newstodate): Budapest Airport is rightly proud of its success in attracting Chinese cargo traffic.
   Among other news on this front in May '23 is Wizz Air now operating scheduled flights starting from May 15, between Budapest and Hangzhou, a major economic and e-commerce hub in China, located just 170 km from Shanghai.
   The new freighter service is operated by Wizz Air with the Hungarian Government's Airbus A330-200F aircraft, earlier operated by Qatar Airways Cargo and taken over by the Hungarian state in October 2020.  
   The aircraft offers the capacity to lift 70 tonnes of cargo on non-stop flights over a distance of 7,400 km.
   The government has signed a contract with Wizz Air to take on the operation of the aircraft that is new in the airline's fleet but sharing cross-type commonality with its Airbus A320 Family aircraft, allowing its pilots to qualify for flying the aircraft.
   Besides securing the state's own capacity to carry emergency and humanitarian loads, the freighter's unused or excess cargo capacity is offered in the commercial market, which is the case with the Budapest-Hangzhou-Budapest operation.
   Driving the operations is the Chinese cargo carrier Universal Translink Airline on a scheduled cargo charter basis, with UTA responsible for selling the capacity on the Chinese side.
   UTA is also behind the freighter route operated by Wizz Air connecting Budapest and Zhengzhou since December 2021.