Every airport carries more than one identifier, and Budapest is no exception. Booking sites show BUD, pilots and flight-tracking apps use LHBP, road signs and locals still say Ferihegy, and the official name honours a nineteenth-century composer. This guide explains what each code means, which one you need and when, what the airport is really called, and how many airports the Hungarian capital actually has.
Κωδικοί αεροδρομίου Βουδαπέστης με μια ματιά
- IATA code — BUD: the three-letter code printed on your ticket, your boarding pass and your baggage tag.
- ICAO code — LHBP: the four-letter code used by pilots, air traffic control, flight plans and flight-tracking websites.
- Official name: Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport (in Hungarian, Budapest Liszt Ferenc Nemzetközi Repülőtér).
- Former name: Budapest Ferihegy International Airport, changed in 2011 — but "Ferihegy" is still in everyday use.
- Where it is: roughly 16 km (10 miles) south-east of the city centre, with a single passenger terminal, Terminal 2, split into 2A and 2B.
Τι σημαίνει ο κωδικός IATA BUD;
BUD is the three-letter code assigned by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), and it is the one you meet as a passenger. It appears in your booking confirmation, on the departure boards, in the flight number line of your boarding pass and — most importantly — on the tag wrapped around the handle of your checked suitcase. A bag tag reading BUD means the bag is routed to Budapest.
Unlike many airport codes, BUD needs no decoding: it is simply the first three letters of the city name. That is a luxury not every airport enjoys, because IATA codes have to be unique across the whole world and the obvious combinations were taken long ago. If you are meeting someone off a flight, the code you want on the screen is BUD — see our live arrivals and departures pages.
Τι σημαίνει ο κωδικός ICAO LHBP;
LHBP is the four-letter code issued by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Where IATA codes are commercial and essentially arbitrary, ICAO codes are geographic and can be read letter by letter:
- L — the region: southern Europe.
- H — the country within that region: Hungary.
- BP — the individual airport: Budapest.
Because the country is encoded in the prefix, every airport in Hungary starts with LH: Debrecen is LHDC, Hévíz–Balaton is LHSM, and the small Budaörs airfield near Budapest is LHBS. One common source of confusion: this LH prefix has nothing to do with Lufthansa, whose LH is an airline designator, not an airport code. ICAO codes are what you will see on flight-tracking sites, in METAR weather reports and in the flight plan filed by your crew.
IATA και ICAO: γιατί ένα αεροδρόμιο χρειάζεται δύο κωδικούς
The two systems exist side by side because they were built for different users. The table below sums up the practical difference:
| IATA — BUD | ICAO — LHBP | |
|---|---|---|
| Length | Three letters | Four letters |
| Issued by | International Air Transport Association | International Civil Aviation Organization |
| Built for | Passengers, ticketing, baggage | Pilots, air traffic control, flight plans |
| Structure | No fixed logic, must be globally unique | Region + country + airport |
| Where you see it | Tickets, bag tags, departure boards | Flight trackers, weather reports, charts |
In short: book with BUD, track with LHBP. Both point at exactly the same runways.
BUD είναι επίσης ο κωδικός της πόλης για τη Βουδαπέστη
IATA also issues city codes for metropolitan areas served by several airports — London is LON, Paris is PAR, Milan is MIL. Searching for the city code returns flights to all of that city's airports at once. For Budapest, the city code and the airport code are the same three letters, BUD, for the simple reason that the capital has only one commercial airport. That makes life easy: there is no risk of booking into a distant secondary field an hour away, as can happen elsewhere in Europe. Whichever carrier you fly — and you can check who serves the airport on our airlines page — you will land at BUD.
Το επίσημο όνομα: Διεθνές Αεροδρόμιο Ferenc Liszt της Βουδαπέστης
The airport's full official name is Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport. It was renamed in March 2011 in honour of the composer Franz Liszt, in the year marking the 200th anniversary of his birth. In Hungarian the family name comes first, so the local form is Liszt Ferenc, and you will see both orders in official use — Budapest Liszt Ferenc Nemzetközi Repülőtér on Hungarian signage, Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport in English.
The rename coincided with the opening of the SkyCourt, the central building that joined the two halves of the passenger terminal into one complex. If you want to know how those halves work in practice, our guide to the airport terminals explains the split between Schengen and non-Schengen areas.
Γιατί το Αεροδρόμιο της Βουδαπέστης ονομάζεται ακόμα Ferihegy
From 1950 until 2011 the airport was officially Budapest Ferihegy International Airport, and the old name has refused to die. Ferihegy is the name of the area it was built on, and the story behind it is older than aviation: the land belonged to Xavér Ferenc Mayerffy, a brewer and vineyard owner who planted vines on the low hill there in the early nineteenth century. Feri is the familiar form of Ferenc and hegy is Hungarian for hill — so the name means, more or less, "Feri's hill".
For travellers this matters in one very practical way: Ferihegy is also the name of the railway station on the line that serves the airport, so you will meet the word on timetables and platform signs long before you meet it on a terminal building. Our airport train guide covers that connection, and the wider transport to the city centre page compares it with the bus and taxi options.
Πόσα αεροδρόμια έχει η Βουδαπέστη;
For anyone booking a flight, the answer is one. Every scheduled passenger flight to and from the Hungarian capital uses Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport (BUD), and all of them use Terminal 2. Terminal 1, the elegant pre-war building closer to the main road, has not handled scheduled passengers since 2012.
The city does have two other airfields, which is where the confusion comes from, but neither sells you a seat:
- Budaörs Airfield (LHBS) — about 7 km south-west of the centre. It was Hungary's main airport before the war and is now a general-aviation and gliding field with a listed terminal building.
- Tököl Airport (LHTL) — a former military airfield south of the city, now used for general aviation.
Neither has scheduled commercial service, and neither has a passenger IATA code you could book. Budapest simply does not have the low-cost "second airport" trap familiar from Paris, Milan or London.
Άλλα αεροδρόμια στην Ουγγαρία και κοντινές εναλλακτικές λύσεις
Hungary has a handful of other airports with commercial traffic, all of them far smaller than BUD:
- Debrecen International Airport (DEB / LHDC) — the country's second-busiest airport, in the east, with a short list of European routes.
- Hévíz–Balaton Airport (SOB / LHSM) — near the western end of Lake Balaton, used mainly for seasonal holiday charters.
- Győr-Pér International Airport (QGY / LHPR) — a small north-western field handling charter and general aviation rather than scheduled flights.
Two foreign airports also sit within driving distance and occasionally undercut BUD on fares: Vienna (VIE) and Bratislava (BTS), both roughly 200–250 km away by road. If you are weighing that up, our Budapest Airport to Vienna guide sets out the bus, train and transfer options between the two cities.
Αεροδρόμιο Βουδαπέστης (BUD / LHBP) κύρια στοιχεία
| Detail | Budapest Airport |
|---|---|
| IATA code | BUD |
| ICAO code | LHBP |
| Official name | Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport |
| Hungarian name | Budapest Liszt Ferenc Nemzetközi Repülőtér |
| Former name | Budapest Ferihegy International Airport (until 2011) |
| Location | About 16 km south-east of central Budapest |
| Elevation | 151 m above sea level |
| Runways | 13L/31R (3,707 m) and 13R/31L (3,010 m) |
| Terminals | Terminal 2, divided into 2A (Schengen) and 2B (non-Schengen), joined by SkyCourt |
| Passengers in 2025 | Around 19.6 million, an increase of about 12% year on year |
| Owners | Hungarian state 80%, VINCI Airports 20% (since June 2024) |
| Based airlines | Wizz Air (headquarters and main base), Ryanair base |
| Time zone | Central European Time (UTC+1, UTC+2 in summer) |
Once you have the codes straight, the rest of the trip is logistics: terminals, transport, parking and what to do with a long connection. Our Budapest Airport travel guide collects all of it in one place.