Malév Hungarian Airlines

1 · POSITION

Malév’s premium cabin changed its name twice. The aviation heritage collection that keeps the airline’s Tupolev Tu-154s records that a first class existed in the early layouts, that a Comfort class introduced in 1983 took its place, and that from November 1991 Sky Club replaced Comfort. The collection treats the sequence as a change in the cabin, since each name arrives attached to a different number of seats. [1]

2 · THE CABIN WAS COUNTED AND RECOUNTED

Seat numbers moved with the cabin. The collection records an initial 153 passengers, then 151, while a first class still existed. The Comfort class of 1983 reduced the carried number to 143; the aircraft occasionally flew in a 157-seat version, and they ended their careers in a 155-seat version. Modernisation of the passenger compartment came through reworked seats and the fitting of lockable overhead bins. [1]

3 · A MUSEUM KEEPS WHAT WAS SERVED

What Malév put in front of a passenger survives as an exhibition rather than a menu. Specialists of the Tomory Lajos Museum fitted out a display aboard an Ilyushin Il-18 that arrived at Ferihegy in 1960, and the cabin gives what the collection calls a taste of the heroic age of flying. The display sets out what uniforms the flight attendants wore and what passengers were given on, for example, a Budapest to Moscow service. [2]

4 · THE AIRLINE OUTLIVED THE COMPANY THAT BEGAN IT

The lineage is older than the name. The national library’s reference account records that MASZOVLET was formed in 1946 with Soviet assistance and a fifty per cent Soviet holding, and that in 1954 MASZOVLET ceased and MALÉV was formed. Ferihegy, built by 1950, became the centre of public air transport. Reporting on 5 February 2012, the Kanadai Magyar Hírlap wrote that Malév had ceased after nearly sixty-six years. [3, 4]

5 · ⚑ CANDOUR

⚑ The register’s 1946 is the founding of MASZOVLET; the national library gives 1954 for MALÉV itself, while the 2012 report counts nearly sixty-six years and so dates the airline from 1946. Nothing fetched reconciles the two. No fetched page gives the calendar date of the last flight, only that it fell on a Friday before the report of 5 February 2012. The cabin classes and seat counts belong to the Tu-154 fleet alone, and nothing fetched documents a Malév lounge or names its caterer. [1–4]