GA in Bulgaria

[Sam Rutherford]

I am hoping to take a little trip to Bulgaria next year.

Does anyone have any first hand experience of GA there? Are there lots of little airfields that we can use, or is it just the big (presumbly expensive) ones?

Would be great to hear some first hand experiences.

Safe flights, Sam.

[IO540]

Constanta seems a fairly busy GA place, but is in Romania :)

[jxc]

And it is very close to Bulgaria very nice resort though

[vanHorck]

Tuzla is the GA airfield on the Romanian cost and closer to Bulgaria. Constanta is further away.

it is operated by a company owned by Dorin Ivascu, who is also MD of Beneasa airport (Bucharest). PM me if you need his contact details.

North of Bucharest is also the airfield Strejnic, but it is an undulating grass strip, so keep the weight of the nose. It is operated by the Romanian Flight Academy.

VFR flights within Romania by foreign registered planes require 48 hour notice to the Romanian CAA alongside a flightplan.

I have no experience in Bulgaria itself.

Enjoy!

[jxc]

I Visited Strejnic last year near ploiesti by car My Sawmill is not far from there I am pretty sure they had a nice new hard runway I may be wrong will be out there in a few weeks will check again

[debiassi]

Just outside Varna, there is a must visit village called Kalimanci. It has its own grass airstrip with 4 runways criss cross. There is a little Han style restaurant that does pony trekking quad biking etc. If you have cleared customs already, then it is consideraly cheaper than going into Varna International airport but in fairness even that isnt extortionate if you pre book. Hope this helps.

[vanHorck]

Strejnic could well have a hard runway now. I know it was being planned after the Academy took over from the Aero Cub of Romania. I'm just a little surprised they did it so quick....

Remeber that Avgas may be a problem at some airfields in Romania, best to check first.

[AN2 Driver]

Just investigating this myself.

Port of entry should be either Sofia, Varna (no avgas), Bourgas or LBGO (impossible to spell:eek: but it's near Veliko Tarnovo) or Plovdiv (no avgas).

I hear Sofia is kind to small aircraft, so are Varna and Bourgas, have heard mixed reactions about LBGO. Prices are said to be normal for airports of this size.

Then there is a number of private airfields owned by Albena.bg, but hard to find on the net. One is Primorsko (LBPR) to which I have been locally, beautiful little airfield with 900*30 m newly surfaced runway and few traffic, the same company has some more airfields, one near Sofia and one in the Region of Varna. Unfortunately, none of them have customs, but all have Avgas. Prices again are very moderate (within the 10/20 Euro range for landing).

Just hearsay / forum blabber I picked up at several places, so no hands on experience (yet) with private planes there.

[IO540]

In some ways, the former communist block countries have introduced GA in a very easy way (Croatia and Czech Rep being the best examples I know of myself) and in other ways they need more time, and some (Albania comes to mind) will almost certainly never make it despite the obvious economic advantages to them.

One has to remember that Bulgaria was the most backward country of them all, perhaps after Albania. I come from the former iron curtain zone and getting a communist party posting to Sofia or Tirana was a standing joke among the commy party brown-nosers because they did not even have toilets in these places - just holes in the ground.

[vanHorck]

Bulgaria and Romania are now a curious mix of the old and the new.

It is perhaps one of the few places where you can send youngsters to see what Europe was like only 50 years ago.

Still plenty horse and carts, not only for gypsies, yet a couple of Bentley's driving on a pothole road which links up to a brand new motorway, a farmhouse which has no sewage and a real hole in the ground with four planks around it as a toilet (pretty cold in winter and smelly in summer) witha full HD plasma in the living room where the two settees are actually the farmer's beds at night with straw in the matrasses.

Going there brings home what we have here

[LH2]

That (VanHorck's) is actually quite a good description. Personally, I'm a bit sad this state of affairs is not going to last long and they will become just like every other EU country after a while.

But I guess we're starting to digress...

[vanHorck]

To continue to digress a bit, I would recommend an adventure in Rom/Bul to any pilot who wants to experience something he or she ll never forget.

There are issues perhaps with avgas or more difficult requirements (just hurdles to overcome) for VFR flying, but come on, we re all adults with organizing skills, and even managed to get at least a PPL, there is nothing that cannot be sorted.

It gives great satisfaction to do things other people don't yet do (fly to emerging GA countries), you'll find a great flying community there (AOPA Romania has only a few members) but more than that, if you bother leaving the plane at the airport and take a trip to the rural environment you will see a world which is quickly vanishing, in all her pure rough beauty, living as it was in the days of survival.

A few Romanian tips:
Timisoara is called the Vienna of Romania with some beautiful Art Deco architecture
Iasi is just 10 kms away from the obscure country of Moldavia and had a beautiful palace and some fab orthodox churches alongside a pretty botanical garden where Eminescu wrote some famous poems
The black sea coast is worthwhile from the hippy beach at Vama Veche (Bulgarian border) to the Danube delta

Best of all, the weather is fab!

Highly recommended!

[WeatherJinx]

Mrs. Jinx hails from Bulgaria and has suggested Dolna Banya as the place to fly in BG. Stunning scenery, great looking little airfield and only 30-40 mins from Downtown Sofia. Website here (http://www.airportdb99.com/index_en.htm).

It even has its own onsite outdoor pool!