According to Georgi Chipilski, the airport’s director, the charter season at Burgas Airport has come to an end with a flight to Antalya at the end of October. The airport has served 1 million, 560,000 passengers to date and is expected to reach over 1 million, 600,000 by the end of the year. This represents a 70% increase in passengers served compared to 2021, which is roughly 56% of the levels of 2019, meaning that the traffic has not yet fully recovered.
Chipilski added, “Poland won as expected, followed by Great Britain, Czech Republic, Germany, and Israel. Three of the first to ten markets are even at or above the level of 2019, including the Polish market, where we anticipate nearly the same levels with a slight increase through the end of the year compared to 2019, the Austrian market, and the Hungarian market, which will experience growth of over 40%. The first five and the following five markets have grown compared to 2021″.
Despite a considerable increase in Polish visitors, Burgas airport cannot compensate for the lost Russian visitors as they expect a large number of Russian visitors, nearly 20,000, which the increase in the Polish market cannot pay for. Still, it was partially offset by the arrivals from Poland and the return to the UK market after two years of Covid.
Tuesday and Friday in August were the busiest days at the Burgas airport, with 120 aircraft handling about 20,000 passengers on Tuesday and 150 aircraft taking 26,000 passengers on Friday. In July and August, the airport saw 800,000 passengers or 60% of the anticipated traffic for 2022.
According to the director of the Burgas airport, this will happen one year after the 2025 prediction made by Airports International Organization that Europe’s air traffic will fully return. Burgas Airport will start offering flights to Antalya this summer. There will be 17 flights to the Turkish resort from August through October.