site.btaAir Passenger Traffic Up 1.4% in 2015 Compared to 2014

Air Passenger Traffic Up 1.4% in 2015 Compared to 2014

Sofia, March 12 (BTA) - Last year was relatively good for Bulgaria's airlines, with the civil aviation traffic increasing by 1.4 per cent compared with 2014 to 7,463,000 passengers, Bulgarian Airlines Association head Svetoslav Stanoulov said here Saturday. He was speaking at a conference on the condition of the Bulgarian civil aviation and an analysis of the aviation market in 2015, hosted by the Bulgarian Aviation Club.

The scheduled air passenger traffic amounted to 4,870 million passengers last year, which is 65 per cent of all air passenger traffic. The passengers carried by charter flights totalled nearly 2.6 million, compared to 2.7 million in 2014. The trend of passengers switching from charter to scheduled international flights continues, Stanoulov summarized.

Bulgarian airlines transported 2,030 million passengers in 2015, which is a drop by around 5 per cent compared to 2014, and foreign airlines serviced 5,433 million passengers - by 4.1 per cent less compared to the previous year.

In 2015, Sofia Airport serviced the highest number of passengers in Bulgaria, 3,902 million people, of which 951,000 were transported by Bulgarian airlines (up by 34,000 passengers from 2014) and 2,726 million by foreign airlines (up by 225,000 passengers from 2014). The number of people serviced by the airports in Varna and Bourgas (on the Black Sea) dropped by 4.12 per cent from a year earlier to 3,555 million passengers.

There is an upward trend in the number of charter airlines, including Bulgarian ones with a planned growth of 5 to 7 per cent, the participants in the conference said. Apik Garabedyan, Executive Director of Bulgaria Air Charter, said that they are trying to be flexible in terms of prices and discounts so as to overcome the aggressive competition of foreign airlines.

Bulgaria's civil aviation includes the Bulgarian Air Traffic Services Authority, passenger and cargo airlines, airports, technical aviation bases, and aviation training centres. According to the participants in the conference, the Bulgarian civil aviation is a completely integrated part of the European one, with highly safe flights.