Walk to the Soviet-era Airplanes of Hungary

HA-LIX One of the few remaining

LI-2 aircrafts in Hungary

The one and only opertional model of this typ

My recent walk to the Aeropark of Ferihegy airport brought nice memories to my mind. Equipped with my mirrorless camera-body and with my vintage Takumars I took some photos as well. As a child I myself boarded one of these russian-made aircrafts like the IL-14 or Tu-154 2B. It is quite easy to access the park by a short walk from the Terminal buildings on a walkway. So when you about to leave Hungary and still have a couple of hours and finished or just fed up with the city it is really nice and cheap option to look around and get involved in Hungary’s civil aviation history. After WWII Hungary fell to the Soviets. After a relative democratic period the communist managed to get total power by cheating on the elections in 1949 and they also anjoyed the backing of the Soviet Red Army which paved the way for Hungary’s sovetization process. The same rules were applied to the hungarian military and civil aviation. Although, the planes were russian-made and first served military purposes before they became an integral part of the hungarian civil fleet to some extent they were liscense-built versions of some American and french planes like the Li-2 and the Tu-134 which of course were made with some modifications and russian engines. Before the era of the so called political-economical changes of the late 80’s early 90’s travel was restiricted to a great extent. Traveling by air paticularly to the western countries was not attainable for the masses, solely to a lucky few on a regular basis. On the one hand mainly it was not cheap at all, on the other hand only the most politically trustworthy comrades and their families were allowed to go abroad and even to study in western countries in the early 80’s. Until 1988 less-automatized russian-made aircraft represented our fleet that of which gave great skills to our pilots, and they still look back with great nostalgia to this period. Particularly the Tu-154 is highly revered among those who have flown it and remembered as the “nagy vas” which literally means the great piece of iron.