The first Hungarian airline companies,
Aeroexpress Rt., Magyar Aeroforgalmi Rt. (Maefort) and
Magyar Légiforgalmi Rt. (Malert) had to suspend operations during
World War II. Maszovlet was founded after the war as the national airline of the newly Communist state, with technical assistance from the Soviet Union. The airline was jointly owned by Hungary and the USSR. In the beginning its fleet consisted of five 21-seat
Lisunov Li-2 passenger aircraft (a licensed Soviet version of
Douglas DC-3) and five 3-seat
Po-2 plane which carried air mail. Its base was
Budaörs Airport, the pre-war international airport of the country (Ferihegy airport had already been under construction but suffered severe damages during the war). Domestic flights started on October 15, 1946 from
Budapest to
Szombathely and
Debrecen; flights to
Szeged and
Győr started the same year. The airline had 1864 passengers in the short period between October 15 and the end of the year. In 1947 the airline received another four Li-2 aircraft, followed by two in 1948, finally in 1952 another Li-2, originally bought for the Army, was added to the airline fleet to replace a plane lost to an accident earlier during the year. From 1947 the capital was connected by regular flights to
Miskolc and
Pécs, and during the next years
Békéscsaba,
Kaposvár,
Nagykanizsa,
Nyíregyháza and
Zalaegerszeg also joined the list of destinations. Seasonal summer flights connected the capital to
Siófok, a popular holiday destination next to
Lake Balaton. The extensive domestic flight network consisting of relatively short routes (the distance to most of these cities is between 120 km and 230 km) was necessitated by the fact that motorways and railways suffered great damage during the war. Flights cost around the same as a first-class train ticket. International flights started already in 1947, with the Budapest-
Prague route. By the summer of 1954 the airline served 12 domestic airports and started services on the
Warsaw,
East Berlin and
Bucharest routes. In 1950 operations moved to the newly finished
Ferihegy International Airport which has been Hungary's main airport ever since then. Budaörs airport is now used for
general aviation only. On November 25, 1954 Hungary bought the Soviet Union's shares in the company. This meant the end of Maszovlet and the birth of the new national airline
Malév, which existed until its dissolution in 2012. ==Destinations==