Aviation in Romania

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Romania has a rich tradition in the aviation field. At the beginning of the 20th century, flight pioneers like Aurel Vlaicu, Traian Vuia and George Valentin Bibescu brought important contributions to early aviation history, building revolutionary aeroplanes and changing the age's mentalities.

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[edit] History

In 1910 the Romanian scientist Henri Coandă built the world's first jet engine and made important discoveries in aeronautics and physics, such as the Coanda effect.

Hermann Oberth was also a native Romanian, born in Sibiu.

Along the 20th century Romania built military aircraft, as the IAR-39 and IAR-80 before WWII, as the IAR-93 and IAR-99 Şoim fighters, helicopters (IAR 316, IAR 330 - under Aerospatiale licence) as well as passenger aircraft ROMBAC 1-11 built under British Aircraft Corporation licence.

The industrial facilities for aircraft building and maintenance are located in Bacǎu (Aerostar SA), Braşov (IAR Ghimbav), Craiova (Avioane Craiova SA) and Bucharest (Romaero, Turbomecanica).

Dumitru Prunariu is the only Romanian astronaut who participated in a space mission (Soyuz 40 - May 14, 1981).

[edit] Romanian air transport operators

Former Romanian carriers:

[edit] Airports in Romania

Main article: List of airports in Romania

Romania has a well developed airport infrastructure compared to other countries in Eastern Europe. There are 17 commercial airports in service today, most of them opened for international traffic. Four of the airports (OTP, BBU, TSR, CND) have runways of over 3,200 m (10,500 ft) in length and are capable of handling wide-body aircraft. Three of the airports (BCM, CRA, SUJ) have runways of 2,500 m in length, while the rest of them have runways of 1,800 to 2,000 m. As of December 2006, TCE and CSB are the only airports with no regular flights. Almost all the airports have experienced traffic growth in the last 4 years.

Here is the list of airports in Romania considering the passenger traffic criteria in 2005.

Airport IATA code passengers (2005) % compared to previous year aircraft movements (2004) website
Bucharest "Henri Coandă" (former Otopeni) OTP 3,513,576 (2006) +16% 58,053 (2006) www.otp-airport.ro
Timişoara "Traian Vuia" TSR 608,212 (2006) +27% 22,738 (2006) www.aerotim.ro
Bucharest "Aurel Vlaicu" (former Băneasa) BBU 385,759   www.baneasa.aero
Cluj Napoca CLJ 244,366 (2006) +21% 6,697 www.airportcluj.ro
Constanţa "Mihail Kogălniceanu" CND 111,142   www.mk-airport.ro
Sibiu SBZ 60.475 2,728 www.sibiuairport.ro
Bacău BCM 44,847   www.bacauairport.ro
Iaşi IAS 41,959   www.aeroport.ro
Oradea OMR 37,891 2,078  
Tulcea TCE unknown unknown  
Satu Mare SUJ 9,276 800 www.aeroportulsm.ro
Suceava "Stefan cel Mare" SCV 12,766 (2006) +65% 872 (2006) www.aeroportsuceava.ro
Baia Mare BAY 6,309 503 www.baiamareairport.go.ro
Târgu Mureş TGM 4,215 394 www.targumuresairport.ro
Arad ARW 1,758 787 www.aeroportularad.ro
Craiova CRA 1,557    
Caransebeş CSB 73    

While Tulcea airport's figures are released, they are not accurate.

[edit] Future development

Following the ascendent curve of the economy growth, the air transportation in Romania experiences a favorable trend. Carpatair is the Romanian airline with the most spectacular growth; the national carrier TAROM is recovering from a difficult period at the beginning of 2000s, 2004 being the first profitable year in the last 10 years, but with a price: the cancellation of the long-haul flights to New York, Chicago, Montreal and Beijing. In 2006 the company started a fleet update program with the acquisition of 4 new Airbus A318 airplanes. The first Romanian low-cost airline, Blue Air is going through a development phase, while other low cost airlines are ready to start their operations.

There are many investment projects also in airport infrastructure: the upgrading of the existing airports (major rehabilitation programs for OTP, TSR, CLJ, CND, the airports with the most significant traffic growth) and the construction of three new airports in Braşov (the only large Romanian city without a commercial airport), Galaţi - Brăila (a 600,000 inhabitants urban area without airport access) and Deva - Alba Iulia (Southern Transylvania).

Currently (dec. 2006) the most advanced project is the construction of the new Braşov Airport [1], the construction site opening is planned for March 2007. The project consists of a 1 mil. passengers/year terminal and a runway of 2,800 m long.

[edit] External links

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