Burgas Airport Welcomes 1 Millionth Passenger of 2023

Jerusalem, 2 August, 2023 (TPS) -- BURGAS, 02.08.2023 (BTA)
Burgas Airport on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast welcomed its one-millionth passenger for 2023 on Wednesday. Yvonne Becker from Germany arrived with her family on a flight from Berlin. She received an official welcome from airport Director Georgi Chipilski, Fraport Bulgaria CEO Frank Quante and Burgas Mayor Dimitar Nikolov.

Becker, her husband and their little daughter were visibly surprised by the festive ceremony, the water salute and the gifts they received. They plan to spend their holidays at the Bulgarian seaside resort of Obzor. Assisted by Chipilski and Quante, they cut a multi-tier cake prepared especially for the occasion.

“We are having a fine season, with more intense air traffic than last year. We expect a 10% growth rate for the season,” said Chipilski.

He added, “There have been no major shifts among Bulgaria’s traditional markets. Poland, the United Kingdom, Czechia, Israel and Slovakia are the leading source markets again this year. So far, the Polish market shows a 10% rise compared with 2022. It has also expanded by 16% against 2019. We are having fewer flights from Germany than we expected, but still, traffic from Germany has grown. We had more early bookings, the season got off to a good start, but there were some difficulties. Anyway, the number of passengers between January and July increased by 13%.”

The flights which will be handled by Burgas Airport in September and October are expected to increase by up to 40%.

Quante, whose company operates the seaside airports at Burgas and Varna under a concession contract, said they will work to increase winter traffic to Burgas, which did not perform as well as Varna this past winter.

Nikolov noted that Burgas is making up for a slow start of the tourist season. “All the fake news about pollution in the Black Sea did have an adverse effect. But there is certainly no reason to worry,” the Mayor said.