From 01JAN to 31MAY25, Budapest Airport, part of the VINCI Airports network, handled 164,000 tons of air freight. An increase of 51% year-on-year, mainly due to soaring e-Com volumes. Budapest is increasingly becoming a preferred Eastern and Central European destination for airlines involved in trade flows from and to China besides the increasing regional airfreight gateway role of the airport in the CEE region.
The actors are the usual suspects such as Air China, Cargolux, China Cargo Airlines, Longhao Airlines, Sichuan Airlines, Hongkong Air Cargo, SF Airlines, YTO Airlines, Fly-Meta, Ethiopian Airlines, China Southern, Ethiopian Airlines, RomCargo, Atlas Air, Uzbekhistan Airways, Georgian Airways andor Hungary Airlines. The latter operates an A330-200 freighter that the Hungarian state bought from Qatar Airways during the pandemic to ensure the supply of masks and other protection equipment to the Hungarians and operated at the beginning by The new cargo carrier, Hungary Airlines is registered in Budapest,owned in majority by Hungarian owners and in minority by UTL (Beijing) Digital Logistics Co. Ltd, which is based in Beijing. The lists of cargo carriers utilizing BUD includes other prominent air freight carriers such as Qatar Cargo and Turkish Airlines Cargo with continuously expanding capacities, among others. The lineup is rounded off by the three leading integrators DHL, UPS and FedEx which serve the airport frequently with daily connections..
Strong industrial belt
A glance at the brands of automotive companies that have established plants there confirms this. They include well-known names like Mercedes, Audi, Suzuki or BMW. Hence, correspondingly broad is the network of their suppliers, pronounces Markus Klaushofer, Chief Commercial Officer at Budapest Airport Ltd. They range from producers of battery modules for electric cars to component providers like Bosch, ZF, Continental, Thyssenkrupp and Schaeffler. This is rounded off by industrial players from the USA, Canada, France, South Korea and China that have also been active in Hungary for some time.
Due to the dense industrial landscape, air freight supplies are vital for the companies doing business there and for the Hungarian economy as such. Nevertheless we have to emphasize that thanks for the gateway role of Budapest Airport, more than half of its cargo volumes are originated or destined cross border, therefore the air cargo linked economic development of the neighboring countries supports Budapest Airport in air cargo too.
Budapest Airport offers industry ample growth opportunities
In the case of rising demand from freight airlines and forwarding agents, the airport offers sufficient facilities in its large BUD Cargo City to accommodate additional volumes. “We can easily handle up to 420,000 tons per year in the freight terminals of our Cargo Center, and we are working continuously on further cargo capacity enhancements via our great cargo community ” pronounces Cargo Chief, Jozsef Kossuth. This is supplemented by more 100.000 m2 additional logistics facilities in the neighborhood of the airport, built by private investors over the past 3-4 years, the executive stresses.
Strict but highly professional customs environment
Customs control of airfreight has been always quick, strict (high control ratio) but also collaborative at Budapest Airport, with almost 100% digitized clearance ratio, 24/7 customs control service and direct offices in the cargo facilities. Customs operate interfaceable e-customs system for the IOSS and H7 processes and prepared on time, years ago for the ecommerce boom. The control capacities of control software systems and also the manpower have been increased following the market demand, due to the high growth rates of e-com volumes, in 2025 their management has set up a Customs dedicated e-commerce team at the airport. Hungarian Customs visit also the customs authorities in China, and established information change and collaboration in the interest of the efficient and seamless control procedures.
With about 260 million shipments flown from China to Hungary in 2024, the customs collaboration helps speeding up the flow of goods and facilitates the clearance upon arrival. For the current year, market expects to surpass the threshold of 300 million consignments.
Next to e-Com, following the global trends another product is likely to climb up the ranking of air freight items handled at BUD, components of e-cars and products containing lithium batteries. Cargo helmsman Kossuth comments: “We started the IATA CEIV Li-batt implementation program as first airport in a community approach in Europe.” The certification program enables shippers and freight forwarders of lithium battery products to meet safety obligations and comply with regulations.
New ownership but no change in high importance of air freight
On 10JUL24, the Hungarian state acquired an 80 percent stake in the airport operator and the French company and world’s leading private airport operator, VINCI Airports a 20 percent share. The French airport operator, VINCI Airports had acquired a 20% stake in the airport for EUR 620 million. Since then, VINCI Airports has been responsible for Budapest Airport’s operation. The airport visibly keeps high focus on the air freight after the change in ownership. The majority shareholder is the Hungarian state, which acquired the shares from the seller group AviAlliance, GIC and CDPQ and had the investment financially settled via a state bank. The Orban government paid the previous owners EUR 2.49 billion for the 80% majority stake.
