Hungary Receives Second KC-390 Military Transport Aircraft

After a delay of almost a year, the second Brazilian military transport aircraft Embraer KC-390 arrived in Hungary.

A video of the aircraft’s arrival was published by the Hungarian military publication Combatant Blog.

As the publication emphasized, with the commissioning of the second aircraft, the capabilities of the Hungarian Armed Forces will increase not only quantitatively but also qualitatively – transport aircraft will be able to perform several operations in parallel.

Hungary received the previous KC-390 in April 2024. At the acceptance ceremony, the Ministry of Defense announced that the country would receive two more KC-390s: one at the end of 2024 and the other at the end of 2025.

Thus, the arrival of the second aircraft only at the end of November 2025 means a significant delay in the previous plans. At the same time, based on the experience of the first aircraft, it takes about six months from arrival in Hungary to the actual acceptance into the air force.

As a reminder, in September 2023, Embraer showed the final stage of assembly of the first C-390 military transport aircraft for the Hungarian Air Force, which took about two years to complete.

The aircraft are being built at the Embraer plant in Gavião Peixoto, Brazil. According to the contract signed in 2020, Hungary ordered two aircraft of this type to improve its military transport capabilities. Later, another aircraft was ordered.

The Hungarian variant differs from the basic version by having an integrated intensive care unit for use as a medical aircraft.

C-390

The C-390 Millennium is a multifunctional, twin-engine, medium-range military transport jet aircraft.

In addition to transporting a variety of cargo and military personnel, it can carry out search and rescue operations, medical evacuation and aerial refueling.

The aircraft can carry up to 23 tons of cargo, fly at speeds of up to 870 km/h, and has a range of about 2,500 kilometers with a maximum load.

Development of the aircraft began in 2006. It was intended to replace C-130 transport aircraft in service with the Brazilian Air Force. The first demonstration took place in 2014 at the manufacturer’s facility, and the first flight was scheduled for the same year, but due to delays in avionics integration, it took place only in February 2015. Since then, the aircraft has gained wide success in the European market, with orders from Sweden, Portugal, the Netherlands, Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary.