site.btaRyanair to Connect England's Birmingham and Bulgaria's Plovdiv from November 2024

Low-cost air carrier Ryanair will operate a new flight route, which will connect the two largest cities of Britain and Bulgaria, Birmingham and Plovdiv, said Plovdiv Airport here on Wednesday. 

There will be direct flights and the airline has already put tickets on sale for the first flight on November 2, 2024, with prices for a basic one-way ticket starting at EUR 35. The new route will add to the 12 existing weekly flights that are operating from Plovdiv Airport to London, Belfast and Manchester.

"Interest in the flight route is expected from Bulgarians who live in the area of Birmingham, as well as from Bulgarians who want to visit the city as a tourist destination," said Plovdiv Airport CEO Doychin Angelov. Birmingham has a population of 1,085,400 and is the fourth most visited city in the UK.

The Plovdiv Airport Development Fund expects the flights from Manchester to Plovdiv to be restored as well, while from the beginning of 2025 there will also be direct flights between Plovdiv and the city of Malaga in southern Spain. Negotiations to open direct flights from Plovdiv to Vienna, Madrid, Brussels and Marseilles are still ongoing, Angelov said.

"Everything depends on whether the current members of the Plovdiv Airport Development Fund will correctly pay their membership fee of BGN 1 per resident per year and whether more municipalities and private companies will join the Fund," he noted. The Fund includes 11 municipalities, with the municipalities of Smolyan and Brezovo joining at the end of March as the newest members.