The main airports in Romania will not be able to face a sharp rise in passenger traffic in the coming years if authorities don’t start the extensive modernization and expansion of the airport infrastructure and if political interference persists.

There is a shortage of specialists in local airports’ management positions, according to experts consulted by News.ro.

The airport traffic in Romania is expected to go up by at least 12% this year. Last year some 16.39 million people transited Romania’s airports, up 23.5% over 2015. Two-thirds of all passengers transited the Henri Coanda airport in Bucharest, according to data from the National Statistics Institute (INS).

The main engine growth for air traffic in Romania are the low-cost flights. The main two players Wizz Air and Blue Air transported over nine million people last year. For this year, Blue Air expects an increase of 13% in the number of passengers, to 4 million.

The experts consulted by News.ro said that the airport traffic increased by up to 20% on certain airports in the first two months of the year. This means that Romania could reach 19 million passengers by the end of this year.

editor@romania-insider.com