Hungary Airlines starts test flights

Written by Bettina Nemes

The new Hungarian airline Hungary Airlines has received the necessary flight licences.

The company’s main activity will be air freight transport. The state-owned Airbus A330F freighter was taken over by Hungary Airlines, which has carried out several test flights with the aircraft in recent days, reported the specialist portal airportal.hu.

Since the end of November, the company has been partly owned by the state-owned Air Hungary Zrt. The majority shareholder of Hungary Airlines Kft. with a stake of more than 50% is the Chinese businessman Wu Jiang, who lives in Hungary. Another shareholder is the Beijing-based UTL (Beijing) Digital Logistics Co. Ltd.

According to Airportal, Hungary Airlines carried out its first test flight between Budapest and Kecskemét on 23 December, followed by another on 4 and 5 January. On 5 January, the aircraft flew to Shanghai’s second largest airport, Hongqiao International Airport, to carry out maintenance.

The company operated under the name Universal Translink Airlines Hungary Kft. in 2021 and then briefly adopted the name Hungary Cargo Airlines in May 2024, based in BUD Cargo City. In October, the company had only one A330F aircraft, which was operated five times a week by Wizz Air on the Budapest-Hangzhou route until the end of November. Hungary Airlines has agreed to purchase 100 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft in order to use Budapest Airport as a hub and thus strengthen passenger traffic between Central Eastern Europe and China.