sunshine007

I'm living in Cairo now and thinking of escaping the weather in august and going to Croatia. There's a flight on Malev Hungarian Airlines that is about 2000 LE cheaper (over 300 USD) with a shorter layover & flight time than I can find elsewhere. Looked on this board and found 1 complaint and 2 "the flight was fine" comments. I would fly Cairo-Budapest-Dubrovnik. (spelling?) Can anyone think of a reason why I shouldn't book this?

Thanks.

Pablostraz

They are going to join the One World Airline Group (AA, BA, Cathay, etc.) so they can't be that bad. Have fun!

kenav

We flew Malev from JFK - Budpest in March-April this year. Going out, it was a few days before they officially became partners with AA. Coming back, they were partners.

Our trip out - Checked on the website a few hours before our plane was to take off, just to make sure there weren't any problems with delays. Well, website said "not operating" for our flight!! We then called (very anxiously) Malev and got a busy signal for 20 mintues (not a good sign.) Finally got someone who said the flight was cancelled and they would be getting us another flight on a different airline and would call us back in 1/2 hour. We waited. Then finally called them. They had rescheduled us - AA to Zurich and then 3 hour layover and Malev to Budapest. So, we got there. But if I hadn't looked on-line the day we were to leave, I never would have know that there was a problem. They should have contacted us.

On way home- Our flight was delayed 5 hours. Again, we had to find this out ourselves.

Hope things are better now.

(FAs on board were very nice. Food just OK. Leg room bigger than on AA.)

Gardyloo

<i>They are going to join the One World Airline Group...</i>

They are now members.

AAFrequentFlyer

I flew Malev from Budapest to Prague earlier this year. It was a 1 class prop job, I believe it was ATR-42. A short 1 hour flight.

On time, ok service, friendly FAs but only 1 spoke some English.

The Malev Lounge in Budapest was small and kind of rundown. Not very impressive since BUD is their hometown hub. Perhaps they will be upgrading it since joining the OneWorld Alliance.

I hope so as they do have a nice central/eastern European route network which means I will be seeing them more often since they became full time members of OW, and at this point I'm willing to do just about anything to avoid LHR/LGW connections to BA to get me to that region. I hope that AA will start at least 1 non-stop from US to BUD .

Gardyloo

<i>I hope that AA will start at least 1 non-stop from US to BUD.</i>

Probably one of their new 787s will be put on LIT-BUD.

AAFrequentFlyer

That is definitely a possibility...