Solyom Airlines

[putneyuk]

Almost ready for roll out at Bournemouth today is HA-SHA B737-500 ex VP-CAJ first aircraft for new Hungarian Airline Solyom Airlines who seem like they wont be around too long if their plans are to go by. Seems like they will have flights all over the world in a very short period. Believe this first aircraft is leased from European Aviation but they have plans to buy A320's and A330's very soon

[TBSC]

...and RJ-85s for regional flights. Nice plans: to start with 6 21-23 years old -500s (as "cheap lease rates will offset fuel and maintenance costs"), have 340s (most probably -500/600 as Trent engines were mentioned by COO) and RJs "next year". Switching from 737 to A320 "later on" and have a fleet of 50 aircraft by 2017 ("10 wide body aircraft and 20-20 medium and short range jets"). Money comes from Oman and Dubai according to the COO. Having 1 million transit passengers (=2800/day) from China through Budapest is "quaranteed by local partners". They are planning to start with ad-hoc charters and change to scheduled flying from Sep-Oct. Tickets are not yet on sale, the only thing their website offers is jobs (collecting candidates since 01Aug), available in hungarian only. The airline is planning to have "700-1000 employees this year and 1400-2000 by 2017".

Sólyom Airways (http://www.solyomairways.com/)

First destinations announced: London, Frankfurt, Paris and Amsterdam. "31 stations are to be served this year while the plan for 2017 is to serve 96 cities in 55 countries".

Well, good luck with that.

[TBSC]

First B-737-500 (HA-SHA) was "delivered" to Budapest on 18AUG. Later that day it returned to BOH "to take spare parts to BUD" (=for further mx, a bit of a leakage here and there). Another 5 aircraft are being painted/prepared for delivery. The airline still has no AOC and website yet. They are planning to use the first 6 aircraft for charter flights while all hungarian charter contracts (until the next summer season) are already awarded to other operators.

Meanwhile they announced that no Avro RJs will be used as "the type is currently not available for lease" (?).

[Capetonian]

I heard about this mooted startup from another source. Unusually for Hungarians, they don't seem to be too smart, and by only setting up their website in Hungarian, a language which is almost indecipherable to anyone other than 12 million or so Hungarian speakers, they seem to have limited their audience.

[The SSK]

A Hungarian colleague tells me that the name is pronounced nothing like it's written - that's not a great idea, for a start.

[StainesFS]

A Hungarian colleague tells me that the name is pronounced nothing like it's writtenFrom the point of view of an English speaker, the pronunciation given by Wiki is something like show-yom.

SFS

[Phileas Fogg]

StainesFS
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Glasgow

From the point of view of an English speaker

:)

P.S. Just joking :)