Darren Cornish Finds Indirect Route as 13 Budapest Flights Sell Out — Puskas Stadium
Arsenal supporters heading to puskas stadium are being pushed onto indirect journeys after all 13 Wizz Air Budapest-bound flights from London sold out by Friday. Prices also climbed fast, with the last available Skyscanner fare at £407 one way.
Darren Cornish, Linz Route
Darren Cornish, an Arsenal supporter and IT manager, booked return flights to Linz, Austria, for £150 after the semi-final and planned to take a three and a half hour train to Budapest on Saturday morning. Standing in Stansted's departure lounge on Friday morning, he said: “We’ll get there by train, plane and automobiles.”
He also said: “A very minimal amount of people I know are going direct.” Cornish added: “This game is a free hit” and, on Arsenal’s final, “If we lose, we’ve still got the premiership. If we win, it’ll be the best thing ever. There’s no pressure on these boys.” Arsenal have reached the Champions League final for the first time in 20 years, and the scramble to reach Budapest has matched the scale of that occasion.
Boxhall, Wares and Laurence
Ben Boxhall, from Essex, was flying to Kraków with two friends before taking a bus from Kraków to Budapest at 5am on Saturday. The three had not booked a hotel in Budapest, and Adam Wares said they had looked at flying direct but Wizz Air prices were about £500 to £600.
They paid £170 for their return flights instead. Boxhall said: “We were 18 months old when they won the league in 2004. This is the first one that we remember and celebrating with our parents and friends.” Another supporter, Ollie Laurence, said he knew people who were paying north of a grand on flights to get there.
Indirect Routes to Budapest
Cornish said most of his friends were travelling indirectly through Vienna, Bratislava and even Rome, a sign that the direct options were not just expensive but largely gone. The trip to puskas stadium has become a test of timing and budget as much as loyalty, with supporters choosing trains, buses and connecting flights to make the final at all.
