Money back after 20 minute delay

Written by Christina Vontin

Eight out of ten trains reach their destination on time.

The state railway MÁV recorded a punctuality rate of 80% for more than 1.1 million passenger trains in 2024. The total operating time of the trains in 2024 was around 95.5 million minutes, which corresponds to more than 181 years. Delays totalled around 3.6 million minutes or 3.8% of the total journey time. Although this is less than in the first few years after the pandemic, the introduction of season tickets for individual counties and the country as a whole and the subsequent fare reform meant that many more people and vehicles were travelling with the MÁV Group in 2024 than before. This also means higher utilisation of the increasingly ageing tracks and trains.

Since summer 2024, passengers have been reimbursed for delays of more than 20 minutes. Around 6% of all trains were affected by delays of this magnitude. The new fare system also led to an increase in group travel: the number of registered groups alone reached almost 29,000.

The suburban trains operating in the Budapest conurbation are particularly punctual, with a punctuality rate of 99.6%. This makes them world leaders. The MÁV Group also operated more than 12 million buses last year, which also achieved a high punctuality rate of 97.7%.