by László Földesi
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The prohibitive restrictions of the Treaty of Trianon created a difficult situation for Hungarian aviation.The flights, however, planned by the expanding airlines of the Entente countries to the south and southeast could not avoid our country due to its geographical conditions. Therefore, the prohibitive provisions had to be relaxed (but instead, strict restrictions were maintained until 1927, which were supervised by the Allied Military Control Committee).
In the spring of 1922, the Hungarian government gave permission in principle to establish two airlines, which it also intended to support financially. One of the companies was the Hungarian Air Transport Company (Magyar Légiforgalmi Rt.), that held their founding general meeting on November 19, 1922.
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However, the Minister of Trade considered it necessary to establish another airline, which he justified by ending the monopoly position of ML Company. Thus, the founding general meeting of Aeroexpress Rt. took place on January 8, 1923.
The company requested and received licenses and exclusive rights for several air routes. These included the Budapest-Székesfehérvár-Nagykanizsa-Zagreb, the Budapest-Prague and the Budapest-Bucharest lines. In the licensing document, the government ensured that Aeroexpress would enjoy exclusive rights for five years from the date of the opening of the routes and would receive free use of the airport and hangar facilities in Budapest, as well as free use of land for the maintenance of their operations and for the construction of facilities. In addition, state aid was also earmarked for the 1923 and 1924 business years.
The license holder undertook to operate flights on the licensed routes for 280 days a year, failing which the license could be revoked without compensation. It had to undertake mail delivery from anywhere, to anywhere, but the condition for this was to recover the cost. The fares could not be higher than twice the first-class ticket of the express train. The flight crew - except in exceptional cases - and two-thirds of the senior management could only be Hungarian citizens.
The shareholders purchased 10,000 shares worth 16,000 crowns each. 4,900 of them were acquired by the German Junkers Flugzeugwerke A.G., which provided the aircraft to the airline in return. At that time it was considered a novel solution that the company not only sold airplanes but also became a major shareholder by providing airplanes to the airlines. This made it possible for those with smaller capital to also obtain modern equipment, which resulted in significant orders to the manufacturers. With this solution, Junkers was present as the main shareholder in several countries.
The airline's first Junkers F-13W floatplane landed on the section of the Danube in front of Gellért Square on December 22, 1922. Aeroexpress then operated a total of 6 planes, which, after a short conversion, were made suitable for both water and land operations. Thus, they could take off from the Gellért Square seaplane station or from Mátyásföld airfield, depending on demand. The all-metal, 5-passenger planes were the most modern in the world at the time.
Since the opening of foreign routes provided for in the license document seemed hopeless for the time due to the tense and unsettled political situation between Hungary and neighbouring countries, the Council of Ministers extended the company's route license to the Hungarian section of the Danube and Lake Balaton, and also allowed occasional operation (in today's terminology, charter) and sightseeing flights. This made it possible for the first passenger to leave the country by air on one of the Aerexpress planes, when the regional bishop János Mikes was transported to Udine, to the Pope, and then back.
In the summer of 1923, the competing company, Magyar Légiforgalmi Rt., began flying scheduled Budapest-Vienna flights. The Austrian Österreichische Luftverkehr A.G., ÖLAG, was granted the right to operate the route on a reciprocal basis. However, the company did not have enough planes to operate the route, so it agreed with the Hungarian government that Aeroexpress would fly the route instead, based on their mandate. As a result, only Hungarian planes operated between the two capitals.
Aeroexpress's water planes flew over the Danube to Vienna. In addition, taxi flights between Budapest and Lake Balaton also started. The first flight departed from Budapest to Siófok on June 29, 1923. On round-trip flights over the lake, the planes took off from Siófok and returned there via the lakeside towns Balatonalmádi-Balatonfüred-Keszthely-Balatonföldvár.
From June 1923, Aeroexpress' Junkers F-13 floatplanes flew daily from the Danube seaplane base in Budapest to Siófok. During the day, the seaplanes, referred to by the locals as the Silver Seagulls, served the public on Lake Balaton. The seaplanes took off from the Danube in front of the Gellért Hotel in the morning, flew down to Siófok in about 40 minutes, and returned in the evening.
In order to better utilize the aircraft, scheduled flights were made between the Balaton resorts with ports on the Siófok–Balatonalmádi–Balatonfüred–Balatonföldvár route. It was also made possible that if you flew from say Balatonalmádi to Balatonfüred in the morning you could return by seaplane in the evening. Later, Keszthely and Badacsony were also added to the destinations. Landing and take-off took place in front of the ports, and the infrastructure of the Balaton boat ports was used for passenger service.
Two seaplanes were placed at the Siófok base so that they could serve the Balaton traffic even if the plane from Budapest did not arrive. The free slots during the day were used by the seaplanes for sightseeing flights and taxi flights from anywhere to anywhere over the lake. At that time practically the entire Balaton was considered an impromptu airport, and the choice of the particular landing site was left to the pilot's routine. The seaplane approached the shore operating as a small boat, or land personnel rowed out to the plane by boat.
The various transport companies cooperated in an exemplary manner to achieve the largest possible air passenger traffic. The state railway company lured those wishing to fly to Lake Balaton with discounted train tickets. They also sold plane tickets at railway ticket offices for flights to Balaton. The ticket offices at the Balaton ports also sold plane tickets or combined ticket if someone wanted to return to the starting point by boat.
The main goal of the airline was not to operate occasional taxi and sightseeing flights, but to operate international scheduled flights. However, as the Treaty of Trianon was not followed by agreements with the surrounding states, Aeroexpress became a member company of the Trans-European Union in order to join the international air transport community. This association, formed by seven airlines in November 1923, coordinated the flights of its members and encouraged better utilization of its aircraft.
In this context, one of Aeroexpress' aircraft made a successful test flight on the Budapest-Constantinople-Ankara-Budapest route in January 1924, before the opening of the London-Constantinople route planned by the union. At that time, no Hungarian aircraft had ever flown that far.
In 1923, Aeroexpress carried 109 passengers in 24 flights during charter operations and 1,228 passengers in 368 flights during sightseeing flights. In addition, the company expanded its business activities by dropping advertising leaflets which was a novelty in the history of Hungarian civil aviation. In 1925, the company was granted the rights to deliver newspapers from the capital to rural towns. (Incidentally, the Vienna flight carried goods and mail in addition to passengers from the very beginning.)
The first “newspaper” flight, departing from Budapest on May 25, flew on the Hatvan-Gyöngyös Eger-Miskolc-Szerencs-Nyíregyháza-Debrecen-Püspökladány-Karcag-Budapest route. The plane only landed in Miskolc or Debrecen, and the mail was dropped from a height of 10-15 meters above designated areas in other settlements.
The unfavorable economic processes of the second half of the 1920s and the lack of state support put the company in a difficult situation (Aeroexpress received state support based on kilometers flown for a while). ÖLAG took back the Vienna-Budapest route from June 20, 1925, and Aeroexpress could not fly internationally due to the lack of route permits or aviation agreements, and domestic occasional flights were not economical. The company's situation was aggravated by the fact that the Transeuropa Union also disbanded shortly after.
The Hungarian government did make plans to merge Aeroexpress Rt. and Magyar Légiforgalmi Rt., because it wanted to support only one company, but in the end this did not happen. In the last year of Aeroexpress's operation, 1926, only a few employees remained, because the main shareholder Junkers Werke gradually withdrew the aircraft it had provided as assets. Most of the dismissed employees were taken over by the still operating Magyar Légiforgalmi Rt., while several continued to work for foreign airlines. After long legal wrangling, the court of registration finally officially deleted Aeroexpress Rt from the register of Hungarian companies on January 5, 1937.
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