Happy New Year to you all! The first post of 2026 picks up where I left off last year, with a review of my journey home from Budapest.

On my last evening in Budapest I have a ticket to see Puccini’s La Bohème at the Budapest opera house located on glitzy Andrasy Ut. It’s a nice, traditional production with an excellent orchestra. After the opera, I walk back to the hotel, taking the legendary chain bridge across the Danube from Pesth to Buda.

Getting to the Airport

Getting from Budapest to the airport is a major nuisance, as the only way to access the airport is by road. The journey will take you roughly forty minutes and costs around EUR27 by taxi, or it will take you 30 minutes if your driver is feeling maniacally suicidal.

Check-In

Air France KLM check-in at Terminal 2A. Check-in only opens two hours prior to departure. As I’ve already checked in on the app, I can head straight for security. There’s a fast track available to SkyPriority passengers. There’s no queue and the process is swift and efficient.

Airside / Skycourt Lounge

Budapest Airport is an utterly unpleasant experience. It’s way too small for the traffic it handles, especially considering that most of the traffic is by low cost carriers bringing tourists into the country. The terminal is very crowded when I arrive at around 14h00. There is hardly any place to sit, no decent shops, and only fast food options for something to eat.

Air France KLM use the Skycourt contractor lounge on the first floor, behind the food court. It’s rather a small, ugly, and gloomy place with limited food options, rather ugly generic furniture, no views, and a very obnoxious young man busy facetiming all his Bros to tell them that he’s sitting in the lounge in Budapest thanks to his American Express… I obviously don’t stay long. Originally, I only go in to get a coffee to keep me from nodding off to sleep. However, it is quickly established that the coffee tastes absolutely dreadful.

Boarding

Man, is this someone’s idea of a joke or what?! My flight is boarding from gate A 04. As on the previous flight into Budapest, the position of the stand relative to the gate area means that I can only get a shot of the front of the aircraft. And even that doesn’t turn out so good because at 16h15 it’s already nearly completely dark outside.

Boarding starts on time at 16h35 for our 17h05 departure. Unlike the inbound a few days ago, this flight is far from full, so that we manage to complete boarding on time, ahead of schedule.

The Cabin & Seat

There are six rows of Business Class, for a total of 24 seats. Which is surprising and seems a bit excessive given the rather light load. Only ten out of 24 seats are occupied in the Business Class cabin. I’m seated on 1F, and I have the whole row of three to myself. The pitch on row one is good. However, one problem with sitting on 1F that I hadn’t considered, is that you quickly get cold feet, once the aircraft is airborne, from the cold seeping in through the R1 service door.

Once we’re ready to depart, a small ground vehicle arrives with the handler readying our aircraft for its imminent departure. I get quite a blast from the past when I spot the old logo of Malev. Of course, the airline is now defunct, but the name of the company lives on in the handling division which was extracted and sold ahead of the airline shutting down.

The Service & Crew

The crew are up to the usual friendly KLM standard. The purser comes to welcone me aboard and we have a friendly chat about her upcoming skiing trip to Switzerland.

There is no service on the ground. Once we’re airborne and the fasten seatbelt sign is turned off, the service starts with another one of those fruit juice boosters.

The Meal – Early Dinner

The meal is the usual Wandels box. The cabin crew approaches me and tells me that they had quite a few last minute upgrades on this flight. As a result, they had to order extra catering at short notice, and therefore, there is a choice of either noodles with shrimps (what I had on the outbound) or pasta salad. I have the latter, and it’s actually rather nice, with tasty olives and chunks of mozzarella mixed in with the pesto. I don’t have the macarons or the nuts, though. I conclude the meal with a coffee with milk.

Arrival in Amsterdam

We arrive in Amsterdam after a flight time from Budapest of ninety minutes and taxi to our stand on the D gates. This part of the D pier is for non-Schengen flights only. As a result, at the end of the airbridge disembarking passengers are directed down a set of stairs to a waiting bus that will take us to Schengen arrivals. At least this way I get the chance to take slightly better photos of my aircraft.

By the time I enter the terminal building I have just over an hour before my connecting flight starts boarding.