Almost 8.3 million passengers passed last year through Bucharest’s Henri Coanda International Airport, making it the 43rd busiest in the European Union.

The passenger traffic on Romania’s biggest airport was up 8.9% compared to 2013, which also helped it move up one spot in the ranking of the busiest EU airports, according to a report by the European Statistics Office (Eurostat).

Romania’s airports have had 10.9 million passengers in 2014, 8.9% more than in 2013. Some 8.86 million passengers to and from Romania flew inside the European Union while 1.54 million flew from or to extra-EU countries. Only 0.5 million flew inside the country.

Romania came just behind Czech Republic, which had 12 million air passengers, but ahead of Hungary, which had 9 million, and Bulgaria – 7.5 million. Poland had over 25.7 million passengers.

Almost 880 million people passed through EU airports in 2014, 4.4% more than in 2013. More than a quarter (220 million) transited airports in the UK. Germany, Spain, France, and Italy were the other top destinations.

London’s Heathrow was the busiest airport in Europe last year, with over 73 million passengers, followed by Paris/Charles de Gaulle (63.6 million), and Frankfurt/Main (59.4 million). Amsterdam’s Schiphol and Madrid’s Barajas came next.

The Athens airport saw the highest increase in passengers of EU’s top 30 airports, of 22%, to 15.2 million, as Greece had the highest increase in air passenger transport of all the EU countries (+16.3%).

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editor@romania-insider.com