Wizz Air (Budapest to Athens)

Getting from my hotel in Budapest required a 45 minute walk from my hotel at 04:00 in the morning and then a 40 minute journey on a bus to the airport. Due to my cutting the walk down to under 30 minutes, the immediate presence of the airport bus at its stop and the aforementioned vehicle making up time en route, I arrived at the airport around three hours before my flight which was much better going that I had expected. Indeed I was so early that my flight to Athens wasn’t on the screen…. Given the efficient nature of security I was able to have two hours in the lounge, but more of that in another post.

There’s the 08:20 flight visible as I was going to Athens for a five day trip. Budapest is the home of Wizz Air and it’s been a few years since I went to the Hungarian capital. But that will have to come in another riveting episode of this blog as Richard is expecting a swift write-up of Athens and I can’t be dawdling writing about Budapest.

I really liked Budapest Ferenc Liszt Airport, or as much as you can realistically like an airport. There was plenty of seating, plenty of power points, plenty of space and clear signage. It’s a shame that the designers of Berlin Brandenburg hadn’t had a little day trip out here, although I won’t start going on about that again. Well, other than that mention.

The boarding started forty minutes before the flight and the division between priority and non-priority is clear.

Yet again, the boarding process was efficient. I joined the boarding queue a little earlier than normal as I was in a window seat and I didn’t want to make people move after they’d just sat down. There was a Wizz Air staff member checking a lot of customer bags for size, although mine wasn’t checked. There was then a bus transfer to the aircraft and the process did annoy a few customers as they kept packing more passengers on. The bored and worn out looking driver shouted “I know there’s space, this seats 100”, although I think they’ve done the sizing in the same way that they do in lifts. The amount of times I’ve seen a small lift and it says that the maximum number of people is 6, but they must be rather thin shall we say. Anyway, I digress, the aircraft is HA-LZI, an A321 which was brought into use in late 2021 and I don’t think I’ve been on it before.

And safely landing in Athens. I had been randomly assigned a window seat and there was also no-one next to me, so it felt as if there was plenty of room and the aircraft was likely only 70% full. The crew were friendly and polite throughout, with the entire flight feeling calm. I bought the ticket as part of the Wizz Air All You Can Fly subscription service, so it came in at just under £9. The flight arrived 11 minutes early and as this was a Schengen to Schengen flight I didn’t have much of a wait at the airport. That meant I was safely in Athens, with Richard arriving the following day on his executive aircraft. Once again, I was suitably impressed by Wizz Air, their pricing and general efficiency.