Follow one of the last Malev flights departuring to Ireland here live: http://www.flightradar24.com/MAH5200

According to Hungarian newssite index.hu, Malév’s aircraft have been departuring every 15 minutes from Budapest airport as of 17:00 local time, bound for Shannon airport in Ireland.  This is confirmed by live radar views at flightradar24.com, showing Malév flights departuring one after the other in the direction of Ireland.

It was earlier reported that the lessor ILFC’s planned to fly back the Malév aircraft to ILFC’s Shannon base, however this was threatened to fall through, as it was reported that no Malév pilots wanted to take on the job to fly the planes.  This seems to have been solved for ILFC in some way, as the planes are now flying to Shannon.

The airline has for a long time not been able to pay for it’s leasing commitments.

After 66 years of service, at 06:00 Budapest time, the Hungarian national airline suspended it’s operations.
The flight from Tel Aviv was stopped before departure, as the Tel Aviv airport operator handed in a bill to the airline that it was not able to pay. Over 4000 passengers were booked on MALÉV flights departuring Budapest Liszt Ferenc Airport.

Yesterday the future of the airline looked a bit brighter, as it filed for bankruptcy protection the  management and government announced plans to keep MALÉV in the air for a couple of more months, until a new national airline with a different structure could be launched into the skies with private capital.  Today prime minister Viktor Orbán said in a radio interview with the public broadcaster that he was looking for private investors who could maybe save the airline, emphasizing that no public money could be spent on saving the airline. Private investors would have to be prepared to also risk their own money and try to manage the airline to be profitable, or at lease not be in a deficit.  The ruling Fidesz party blames long mismanagement and a bad deals made regarding privatization in 2007, then re-nationalization in 2010 by the then ruling MSZP party.

The national airline was not able to live up to it’s financial obligations following a recent decision by the European Commission, it was required to repay government loans ruled as contravening state aid regulations. In addition Limburger Lóránt, CEO of MALÉV said that it’s service providers required payment in advance, which speeded up the use of the money the airline had.

Actress Athina Papadimitriu warns that Hungarian children are under too  much pressure

In a recent edition of morning tv show Mokka, Papadimitriu says that Hungarian children are put under a lot of pressure from the parents, from the society and warns that not caring about their emotional development, only performance in other fields will result in huge issues for them in their teenages and adulthood. She would go back to the kindergarten stage and start out the transformation from there, adding that kids learn to shoot eachother as kids in playtime, and that we witness school and university shootings. According to her, the kids grow up nowadays with so much stress in their bodies and that they have no possibility of channelling all of the stress and energy leaving all this locked up inside them and resulting in catastrophical outcomes later in life.
She points out that childhood stress has been proved to result in schizofrenia.  Underlining that you don’t know who you give your child to when you deliver them to kindergarten and school.  You don’t know what values and stress that the kids are put under and filled with.

It was pointed out by the anchors that the rate for attempted suicide among youth between the ages of 15-19 in Hungary has increased by 217%  from 2008 to 2009.

The Hungarian police brought home four Hungarian citizens from Thailand, Péter Tarjányi, police officer said on the morning show Mokka on friday.

The 6er lotto didn’t have a winner of the first prize this week, but here are the numbers from Szerencsejáték Zrt. :

Winning numbers:
11
21
22
24
25
29

Prizes:
6 – no winner;
5 numbers, 682.635;
4 numbers 8815;
3 numbers 1485 forint prize.

Budapest Airport presented its new passenger security screening system today. BA deputy CEO Dimitrios Gatsonis, Malév CEO Péter Leonov and brigadier-general József Dúzs, the director of the Airport Police Directorate tested the devices, purchased for a total of 900 million HUF, in front of reporters.

BA will install all twelve state-of-the-art X-ray machines as well as new archway magnetic devices (AMDs) by 30 June, thereby completely replacing the airport’s passenger security screening system. The new equipment will make security screening quicker and more seamless, cutting waiting time and enhancing security.

Dimitrios Gatsonis presented the operation of the new hand baggage screening system and AMD at the press event. The baggage belts before and after the X-ray machine are longer, enabling four passengers to use it simultaneously at both ends, instead of the one or two currently. The machine automatically rotates the 20 trays that are in the system. At the end of the belt, a camera checks that the tray is empty and does not allow the machine to run on until there is as much as a single coin left on it.

The operator sees the baggage on two monitors, shown from the side and from above, giving a clearer picture of the contents. Similarly to the computer tomographs used in medical diagnostics, the device is capable of analyzing the density of materials in addition to their atomic weight. The machines used earlier labeled chocolate just as suspicious as explosives, since their atomic structures are similar, although their density is different. Thus, the number of false alarms will drop and passenger screeners will have to open fewer pieces of baggage, speeding up the screening process.

The device automatically signals if it encounters suspicious baggage. The operator can divert such baggage onto a separate belt with the push of a button. Thus, baggage considered “unclean” does not hold up the queue.

The new AMDs are much more intelligent than their predecessors. Whilst the old devices were equipped with six transceivers generating electric fields, the new ones have 20. They operate with a lower margin of error and the smaller number of false alarms results in a quicker, more seamless process. Budapest Airport’s new AMDs are also capable of detecting objects with a low metal mass, concealed in footwear, and their operation cannot be disturbed by external factors such as draught or neon lights.

At present, the systems used at Budapest Airport are considered to be cutting-edge technology in Europe, since these models by Smiths and Heimann appeared on the market only last year.

Dimitrios Gatsonis, the deputy CEO of Budapest Airport said: “We are putting a lot of emphasis to making security screening as comfortable and as quick as possible for our passengers ahead of the summer peak season. We are among the first airports to have such state-of-the-art technology; we are proud of the fact that we will be using it on a daily basis very soon, reducing waiting time for our passengers.”

Malév CEO Péter Leonov said: “We greatly appreciate that the management of the airport took the interests of airlines and of passengers into account, speeded up its earlier plans and will install the new passenger security screening systems of Terminals 2A and 2B ahead of the summer peak season. We hope that this will cut waiting times at passenger screening, and we will be able to operate with the timeliness that passengers have come to expect of us in the summer peak season as well.”