Although Bucharest's main airport, Otopeni, is only the 58th busiest passenger airport in the European Union (EU), it saw the third largest increase in passengers - a 9.7 percent rise  from 2009 to 2010, according to data from Eurostat. A total 4.9 million passengers traveled via the airport in 2010, of which 601,000 were Romanian nationals, 3.3 million being passengers from inside the European Union (EU) and almost 1 million passengers flying from outside the EU.

Regarding general passenger air travel in the EU, Romania accounted for 8.8 million of the 777 million passengers in the EU27, and showed healthy growth of 10.8 percent on 2009.

The busiest airport in the EU remains London’s Heathrow airport, with 66 million passengers handled in 2010. However this was down 0.2 percent on 2009 figures. The second and third busiest airports were Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport, which handled 58 million passengers and Germany’s Frankfurt/Main airport, with 53 million passengers in 2010.

In 2010, nearly 777 million passengers were transported by air in the 27 EU countries, of which 323 million were on intra-EU flights, 291 million on extra-EU flights and 163 million on national flights.

Nicola Peyton, nicola@romania-insider.com