Remembering that Malev had 18 737's & 4 Q 400's there should be plenty of bones to pick over without resorting to boxing matches, given that both parties are talking about 4 aircraft apiece.

Wizz were already there, the company is from there ! but no doubt Ryanair will have a point to prove. Depends of course on whether the Govt/Airport choose to give them a "sweet" deal, or do the sensible thing & support their local company.
The caveat to any aircraft from FR going there is, I believe, a "sweet" deal (as usual) Wouldn't be surprised if this just vanishes in a puff of Scotch (make that Irish) Mist, but then again, with 80 airframes lying idle for Winter, I guess they can afford to give it a punt.

FR recruitment drive at BUD
 

Anyone suspect a Brookfield/Ryanair "How low will you go" hourly rate to ensure a BUD base position? Am I being too cynical? 5/3 is a certainty, maybe a 5/2? A liability clause for using too much deicng fluid?? (tounge in cheek) They will make no qualms about suggesting that they have you over a barrell. It's whether you actually believe them? Goodluck to the ex-Malev crews

Fifteen of the 737s are being ferried BUD-SNN this evening, still with Malev flight numbers and crews.

A bad week for all of the people involved....

I have a very, very good friend inside Malev - I can only wish him and his family every last ounce of luck for the future....

But let's not get confused....

Spanair closed down because the Catalan Government pulled the plug....The owners/backers made a business decision as they have a right to do in any business

But Malev's demise is because of nonsensical rules introduced by the faceless, unknown, unelected, gravy swilling politicos in Brussels...

I've said it before here on PPrune, especially during the Alitalia crisis, but if Hungarian taxpayers are happy to have their own, elected Government continue to hand over some of their taxes to support Malev, what the :mad: has it got to do with non-Hungarians in Brussels ??

One day, one day, the whole of Europe outside of France and Germany will have no choice but to say " Enough's enough with the whole bloody nightmare that is Brussels "

Malev
 

And so say all of us - the sooner we leave Brussels the better for us all.:ugh:

Some of the best pilots I've ever had the pleasure to fly with were from Malev, true professionals, extremely friendly guys they made me discover their fantastic nation and capital,when the Red bull air race was on, and they were flying the 737 low over the Danube between the Chain bridge and Parliament.
For what is worth this is how I will remember Malev.
For the rest, you know, dictators go along with dictators....

This stinks - the blue-yellow airline will be ready to take over in two weeks...TWO WEEKS! I didn't know that setting up a base of ops was such an easy task...isn't it strange, how some things like request for payback of subsidy and arrival of the vulture airline are so close together?

Just think along the lines - what is it called "rescue operation" by RYR if not the long-awaited offensive against Wizzair?
Finally they can get into one of the Wizz bases (and be welcome there!) and start to operate the SAME routes (BUD-EHN, BUD-CRL, etc.) like Wizz - for sure on an initially lower price, but then... Guess what...

Don't get me wrong I do support competition and in general I have no problems with RYR, but I hope Wizzair will stay in the business for long beside them.

Also - since Malev is bust the Hungarian government (of which you've heard more than enough lately, I'm sure) doesn't have to PAY the penalties to the European Commission due to the support of Malev (and we talk about some big bucks here) - so - just think - we had a national airline with the government as major shareholder... They probably said: to the heck with it, we can spare some money by putting it down, we don't have to support it and we don't have to pay the penalty to the EC - win-win for them, but as normal they don't give a **** about the people involved.
It's not the fact that Malev went bust, it's the way it did. Oh, and for those of you who don't know, the head of Wizzair was a Malev CEO once upon a time - he has managed to get down the annual losses by 60 percent in one year and he got fired - then he went and founded Wizzair...

There are plenty of FR 737's parked up at BHX for the winter (even though they being used in rotation). Perhaps they'll be positioned out to BUD in the coming days.

Sorry Hussar 54,but I don't understand your theory/complaint.Regardless of EU legislation,any airline which receives state aid to stay alive is "competing" unfairly with airlines not in such a favoured position.It should probably be outlawed under worldwide regulation.May be different for a purely internal airline,but it makes for a not level playing field for international competitors,maybe even sharing identical routes.

I don't love the European Commission any more than the rest of you, but the rules are in place to ensure free and open competition.

Those who don't like the system can go and live in N Korea. The rest of us accept that well-run businesses will thrive and badly run businesses will fail.

Malev was hardly ever run as a business at all. Even after the soviet era ended its management would will still jump when its incompetent political masters said jump. It never made an aircraft selection decision on its own, fairly and openly.

Some guys here don't realise that the aviation world doesn't need Malev any more than it needed Olympic. The pax will continue to fly.

Sad to see another name disappear. But once again this reinforces the idea that airline business is just that, a business. Say what you like about Ryanair but that's first and foremost what they're about and there's plenty of business to be had out there. The way some people are talking, you'd think MOL pulled the trigger on Malev but it was suicide.

Any airline that fails to understand this reality is doomed to follow Malev into history.

While FR is not the most employee friendly organization, at least some will still be able to put food on the table, and pay the mortgage. Is that good:) or bad:{?

Fortunately, there are opportunties for 737 skippers from the Middle to the Far East. Not such great news for cabin crew however, I guess.

Good luck to all.

If you honestly think Ryanair does not get any subsidies and hasn't gotten them in the past, then you are sadly mistaken.

His Dudeness

The difference is fundamental.Most FR subsidies are from airports or regional authorities trying to get flights where there may well otherwise be none,and to a successful,rather than eternally loss making outfit.Rather different to a national government trying to prop up an airline despite EC rules totally forbidding it,and where there are perhaps plenty of profitable operators to step in without tax payers money being wasted.

Getting OT here, but in Italy (and most other places) all of those airports/regional authorities are, of course, funded by the taxpayer... you say toe-may-toe, I say toe-mah-toe :}

FR announced 2 weeks ago that it was starting services from Bud so you can pretty much guaratee that they had already had discussions with Bud Airport authorities and discussed route opportunities going back months.

The Malev issue relating to EU was announced on January 9th so not sure how you can suggest its quick.......the dogs in the street knew months ago that this was a strong possibility that this would be EU decision.

The fact they can move quickly means quite a bit of planning for eventualities like this but think you will find other airlines would also have been doing the same thing.

MOL will be rubbing his hands with glee at the thought of a carrier, especially a national carrier going down. He will be sending in his army of minions to take over the whole operation and no doubt get better rates than Malev did. This is the way he works sadly!

He negotiates reduced landing fees, the airport makes more money from selling the food & drink that he does not provide on the flight to more passengers than they had before.
Both sides win.

Most airports make most of their money nowadays from selling stuff to the passengers who have to check in earlier due to the security circus and then sit around for 2 hours with nothing to do but spend money.

Unless every other carrier is given the same concessions that Ryanair gets, it is still a subsidy and is anti-competitive.

There will be no jobs for the F/Os at Ryanair from Malev. Experience counts for nothing in the modern world of LCCs.

Having been out of work as an experienced F/O, and being up against the cadets, it is a depressing outlook. Unfortunately, you will have to go out of Europe for work. Still, even that must be better than taking it up the ass by joining Wizz or RYR.

If other airlines deliver the same number of passengers then they will.

Where will the Fat Lady sing next Friday ?
 

Two Fridays, two airline closures, they say bad things happen in threes, so, who do we reckon is going to shut up shop on Friday 10th Feb 2012 ?

last friday?
 

which airline closed last week?

cheers!

Spanair.

----

What makes you think that other carrires don't enjoy the same concessions?

Well, Malev was shot down by Brussels because it was subsidized, which they consider illegal. Yet, Malev was important for Hungary as a flag carrier and ensured that Hungary was connected by public transport with most European cities.

So why is it legal then that FR and others are getting paid to fly routes which would otherwise be not economically viable? Just because it is important that these cities are connected to others for the local governments?

What the hell is the difference?

Either you want market only and are prepared to see hundreds of flight connections stopped, because they could not live out of their own. OR, you want these connections and then subsidies need to be part of the game.

You can't have it both ways.

How about running public transport like trains this way? you'd end up with lots of villages, cities and others without any connection to the outside world. So trains and other public transport is subsidized and nobody really opposes this because without it, there would be no coverage worth mentioning and you'd end up with ghetto cities and ghost villages all over the place.

So why the hell should a country not be allowed to have a state run and subsidized flag carrier if it so decides?

Or wait, under the new hegemonial rule of the Brussels figureheads, there are no countries anymore, just European provinces? And is it a coincidence, that one of those provinces has a non grata prime minister at the very time that it's flag carrier has the rug pulled from below it?

Malev was serving major cities and connections. Ryan and Wizz will serve their typical "proximity" airports anywhere within 100 miles from those cities. They are no replacement for what Malev used to do. And they do get paid subsidies just as Malev did, but under the different name of local incentive payments or whatever it's called when a region pais them to fly to airports the large carriers won't touch.

The LCCs and their subsidized low cost airports have their reason of being. But so do flag carriers in countries which otherwise become even more isolated and ready for the big take over.

Somehow I hope that Hungary will succeed in rising a sucessor out of the ashes like Bulgaria did when Balkan went bust after a corruption ridden privatisation scandal. Bulgaria Air is doing fine these days, despite Wizz and Ryan giving some money to Plovdiv and the other airports on the side.

Stuckgear

As every one of your examples has to do with FR,do you have some prejudice against them?
There IS a difference between national governments pumping money into eternally loss making airlines and local authorities attracting successful airlines to their locality which may,at least,create jobs and,in some cases,massively increase tourism to the area.
...........and AN2,have you forgotten Sabena,Alitalia,Swissair etc?All bloated airlines with over-optimistic route structures and lo-costs weren't even on the sidelines at most airports.Two were in EEC founding countries,whereas this thread is being made to appear as though it's an anti -Eastern Europe thing.
I have Hungarian relatives and I believe most are astonished,with the country on it's knees and massive personal taxation,Malev lasted this long.

As a former Swissair employee, I certainly did not forget Swissair and how it's end came about. And the pressure the EU exercised against the non-EU Swiss government which lead to them letting it go down. And the fact that the re-emerged successful carrier was sold for peanuts to Germany, where it's the cash cow for it's mother now.

The impact this scandal and the way it was dealt with had on our country is felt until today. Whatever trust I had in the country ended that day. It has never been restored and Switzerland has been on the decline since. Looking at the renewed attacks on our sovereignity in recent months, the country's failure to back Swissair will at some stage be remembered as the beginning of the end.

Swissair failed because of an ill conceived expansion plan, not because it was internally weak or unprofitable. Swissair failed, because it's parent company severely misjudged the risks and badly executed the take overs of namely Sabena and AOM. Not because it was a bad product.

Ever since this happened, this country's self confidence has all but disappeared. It will probably end one day by Anschluss to the EU, something which politicians here crave for since a long time. It all started with the end of one of the most respected airlines of the world.

Tell me. If British Airways or Air France would ever fold, do you think that any government under which this happens would survive this? No way. Likewise with Lufthansa, who btw is doing EXACTLY the same thing now then what Swissair's Hunter Strategy was about with high success. Could a German government survive a bancruptcy of Lufthansa? Never.

You mention Alitalia. If the same criteria would have been applied to it as it has been to Malev, Alitalia would have been gone YEARS ago. It is still there.

A country whose flag carrier disappears has to a large extent lost it's national identity and it's representation in the world. Hungary better consider this and see that they re-start something else which deserves to carry their flag. Otherwise, they might well pull the flag of their parliament building as well.

AN2 Driver
 

Anyone who talks about there being flag carriers in the EU is living 20 years in the past.
In your mind, then, what's the flag carrier of Ireland, Aer Lingus or Ryanair?

I agree with some of your reasons for the demise of Swissair, but you forgot to mention the years of operating long haul (subsidised?) services out of Geneva: a questionable business strategy.

Black kettle,
I don´t agree with you. Money comes to the company,neither MOL nor any other CEO will care about where it origins. MOL has shown time and again how loyal and dependent a business partner he is. RYR and its likes competes a lot with the 'normal' carriers and the well payed jobs that pay a lot into social security and the tax system going down the drain put the cost of the LCCs to public up again.

The real issue is, that these things are not considered when making the comparison. Any sane airport management/local politician honestly thinking he will gain from RYR when complying to their condititions is dead wrong. If they would, MOL would have invented the perpetuum mobile. I think he is a smart dude, but not that smart....

In one case, taxpayer money flows from a central government to prop up legacy carriers, in order to maintain employment/tourism/national pride.

In the other case, taxpayer money flows from regional governments to regional airports to subsidise low-cost carriers coming in order to create employment/tourism.

I can't see any "fundamental", or moral difference.

black kettle,
Nope. FR is by and large a successful business model and that has to be applauded, it has however had detrimental impacts in the industry. They provide income to many flight crews but have also set a standard that sees T&C's lowered.

I am no lover of FR, I am no hater of FR.

FR is a large player of the EU subsidy game and that was why those examples were given. If you are attempting to imply an open bias from myself against FR, you are looking for monsters under the bed .

:=:=

OT
 

:D

Well said Stuckgear, one of the most balanced posts on Ryanair I've seen. I could add that the FR business model doesn't necessarily require the animosity and general disagreeable attitude (towards both pax AND crew) we associate with O'Leary's company. It could be the best place to work in Europe (and one of the best-paying) just as Southwest, the first LCC, is probably the best place to work as a pilot in the US.

But THAT would take real management skills, not just the killer shark instinct MOL possesses.

main dog,

thank you. FR does exactly what it says on the tin. and no one should expect more or less from them from providing what they do.

O'Leary, love him or hate him, is from an accountancy background (KPMG, IIRCC), so no one should be surprised otherwise if he runs the operation purely on figures and numbers.

As such, he is highly in tune of what subsidies he is able to leverage from the EU to help his bottom line. Can anyone decry O'Leary for that ? No. He is doing what is best for his P&L statements.

Any issues, conflicts, problems etc. with subsidies lies with the EU, the and if the EU wish to subsidise, one airline, not another that is their failing.

The operational environment for carriers in the EU is a farce, and that is the fault of the EU.

As I said before, when we have politicians that stand up for and promote the industry, we will see change, until then nonsense policy and a percentage point here or there of a fringe vote seems to take precedence over the billions that the aviation industry earns in taxes for governments, the billions generated in direct and indirect employment.

Governments and bureaucrats have choked the the golden goose for all it is worth; it's at the point of extinction. When they've regulated and taxed aviation out of the EU, what are they going to do then ?

Of course they wont give a stuff because they'll still have their gold plated, index linked, public sector pensions and hubris to keep them warm at night.

And AN2-Driver pointed out:

it's equally worth a point a point of consideration that Malev also paid the price for Hungary's position on the EU Veto:

Hungary, alone with UK, said vetoing plan for further EU integration seen as vital to eurozone rescue | Politics.hu

No conspiracy theories, but political reality: perhaps a factor in the consideration of illegal subsidies in the EU, while the EU subsidises elsewhere, which it considers legal, despite having legal cases drawn against them. Maybe Malev were caught in 'perfect storm' of political leverage? who can say? I have no evidence either way. Either way though, as above, the operational environment for carriers in the EU is farce and it needs addressing before the golden goose is dead and buried.

I haven't really thought through the EU legality around the alleged differences between Malev receiving subsidies from the Hungarian Government and Ryanair receiving ' Incentives ' from Regional and City Governments....

However, for those of you posting here that it is acceptable for Brussels to interfere and dictate to the Hungarian Government ( and previously the Italain Government ) what and how those currently independent Governments can do with their own tax revenues....If you genuinely believe that is acceptable or desirable - then beware !!

Because the logical follow-on from that is that you no longer really need your own National Governments anymore and therefore you will no doubt be quite happy to accept their dissolution and replacement by Regional Governments funded from the EU's central funds, which would, of course, need to collect all 100% of all taxes paid throughout the EU before deciding how to redistribute them....

Sounds crazy ?? Well, if 15 years ago you had been told that these same unelected EU Commissioners in Brussels would require member Governments to submit their own economic plans and budgets for review and approval by a a German based Central European Bank, you would have said that that idea was crazy too....

As the phrase goes - Be careful what you wish for....

Hussar 54
 

Like lots of Europeans, Hungarians are not having an easy time financially. Maybe you would care to ask them whether they want the taxes they pay out of their tight incomes to be spent on subsidies so they can fly to Frankfurt on Malev, or whether they want to pay less tax and fly to FRA on Lufthansa.

Of course, tax-and-subsidise governments will never ask the people.

Good point....But at least the Hungarian people have the opportunity evry few years to vote for the people they want to run their country and spend their taxes....

If they don't like the way their taxes are spent, they'll vote for different politicians next time....

However, I can't remember the last time they were allowed to vote for the EU Commissioners who dream up these ridiculous rules....

And yes, I know that the Hungarian economy at the moment is a basket case - but I don't really believe the € 300 million handed to Malev ( was it ? ) five years ago is the cause of Hungary's current economic problems....the amount is no more than a thimblefull in the current resevoir of debt that Hungary is struggling to manage....

And yes, you're absolutely right - Hungarians can now fly Lufthansa to Frankfurt, the same as they can also fly Lufthansa to and between Germany,Switzerland, Austria, and Belgium because the same EU Commissioners continue to turn a blind eye to Lufthansa's virtual monoply of these routes....

So just a slight correction to your almost correct statement - Hungarians now will have to fly Lufthansa to Frankfurt which is not exactly a good example of competition is it ??