Airline Wіzz Aіr has announced the four routes to its Gatwick base in London from Burgas, Varna, Venice and Palermo. The carrier will also increase frequencies on its newly announced routes from Gatwick to London, Milan and Vienna, the company reported.

From 27 March, the carrier will operate flights five times a week from London Gatwick to Venice, and from 29 March it will fly twice a week to Palepmo, the capital of the Italian island of Sicily. In addition to the four new routes, the airline is also increasing the frequency of its flights to Larnaca, Milan and Vienna from daily to twice daily on most days.

The news comes after Wіzz Аіr’s successful acquisition of 15 daily slot doubles at London Gatwick Airport and the already announced addition of 14 new routes from spring 2022 onwards. This means that Wіzz Air will operate a total of 25 routes from there for the summer season of 2022

The automated gates – vb i-match 5 e-gates supplied by Vision-Box – make use of facial recognition technology to verify the traveller’s identity. As for future developments, fingerprint will be activated to complement facial verification, making it the first multimodal biometric solution implemented in the Balkans. The associated contract is co-financed by the Bulgarian Ministry of Interior and EU, under Action 5 – “Establishing automated border control for EU citizens,” Annual Program 2012-2013 of the External Borders Fund.

“In modern airports like Varna and Burgas, facing constantly increasing flows at the border, it is imperative to embrace new technologies that concede the traveller more control and better convenience during his journey, while delivering the most efficient and effective tools to the border control authorities to increase their capacity,” explained Vision-Box’s Jean-François Lennon.

The e-gates can be used by e-passport holders who are aged 18 or over and are citizens of the European Union, European Economic Area or Switzerland.

Christophe Viatte, Chief Commercial Officer of airBaltic: “The new route will offer excellent opportunities to travellers visiting the warm and sunny Varna by the Black Sea. For the upcoming summer season we will discontinue a number of routes, recording somewhat weaker demand. This move makes an aircraft capacity available for the new route.”

Konstantins Paļgovs, General Manager of Tez Tour in the Baltics: “Varna is a popular and highly demanded holiday destination for our travellers, and we are delighted to partner with airBaltic to start flights on the route.”

* Lowest return fare, including taxes, fees and service charges, on airBaltic.com, subject to availability

airBaltic will fly from Riga to Varna two times a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. Passengers will board a Boeing 737-300 aircraft for a flight that will last for 2 hours 40 minutes. Return ticket price will start at EUR 199, including airport fees and transaction costs. A full schedule of airBaltic flights can be found on the company’s homepage at airBaltic.com.

airBaltic serves over 60 destinations from its home base in Riga, Latvia. From every one of these locations, airBaltic offers convenient connections via North Hub Riga to its network spanning Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, CIS and the Middle East.

Tez Tour offers charter flight to travellers all year round. Tez Tour customers are welcome to visit Turkey, Greece, Spain, Egypt, UAE, Thailand, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Maldives, as well as skiing resorts in Austria, Italy and Andorra.

The step was announced Wednesday after a meeting of Varna Mayor Ivan Portnih and Cenk Ocal, head of Turkish Airlines for Bulgaria, according to reports of dnevnik.bg.

The Turkish air carrier plans to conduct the direct flights year-round 4 times a week, according to the press office of the Varna Municipality.

“Turkish Airlines is a leading carrier in Europe, we operate in over 200 countries, and we have the ambition to reach 2000 flights a day,” Ocal was quoted as saying after the meeting.

He argued that the new Varna-Istanbul flight would make it possible for Varna to become a bridge to the countries from the Middle and Far East.

Ocal explained that Turkish Airlines would promote the direct flight to Varna for free not only in Turkey but in all of the countries where it functioned.

He vowed that all inflight magazines of the company would provide information about Varna and all major cultural, sports and other events taking place in the Black Sea city.

As of March 30, Serbia’s flag carrier, Air Serbia, will also launch flights from Belgrade to Sofia and Varna.

Flights of Air Serbia to Sofia will run every day and flights to Varna will run three times a week. As of June, Belgrade-Varna flights will be conducted on a daily basis.

The flights from Belgrade to Sofia and Varna will be serviced by ATR72 aircraft manufactured by a French-Italian consortium.

According to the data of the Bulgarian-German consortium, in the past months of 2012, most of all during the summer tourist season, Russia and Germany remained the main markets for the airports Varna and Bourgas .

The concessionaire of the the two Black Sea airports is currently building two new passenger terminals which are to be completed in the summer of 2013.

The investment in the construction of the two terminals is part of the investment plan of Frapport for the two Black Sea airports amounting to nearly BGN 250 M.

The new terminals will have much bigger areas for arriving and departing passengers, new commercial spaces, and will be equipped with modern passenger service systems, according to Fraport Twin Star Airport Management AD.

The buildings located on an area of 18 000 square meters in Varna and 20 000 square meters in Burgas have been designed to suit different passenger flows, with options to increase capacity to service extra loads of passengers.

The capacity of the new terminal at the Burgas Airport is 2.7 million passengers, while the Varna Airport has a capacity of 1.8 million passengers.

The Project for the new terminal of Varna airport

Lazarova arrived for a summer vacation in Varna with her family; the special surprise and award for her was a hand-made tapestry created by a master weaver, BGNES reported.

On Saturday, the other Bulgarian Black Sea airport, Burgas Airport, welcomed its two-millionth passenger, German neurosurgeon Gurdum Egerler.

Egerler, who arrived on Germany Air flight, was taken to her hotel in the Sunny Beach resort with a limo.

The German doctor from the hospital in Magdeburg had already been on vacation in Bulgaria three times, visiting Sunny Beach and Golden Sands.

She first had a vacation in Bulgaria back in 1981; her 29-year-old son has also visited the Bulgarian Black Sea coast.

“The concession of the Burgas and Varna airports is a good example of public-private partnership,” Moskovski said at the ceremony.

“We managed to attract EU financing for the railroad infrastructure, but when it comes to airports and ports concession is the best approach,” he added, as cited by Varna 24.

The Transport Minister expressed his certainty that the concessionaire’s investments will turn the Varna and Burgas airports into modern European airports and will lead to an increased number of passengers and the attraction of more airline companies.

The Varna airport resumed serving passengers and flights after it was closed in October 2011 for rehabilitation of its runway.

Since the fall of 2011, concessionaire Fraport Twin Star Airport Management has invested BGN 40 M to improve the runway. During the construction, had been used about 150 000 tons asphalt, side lanes of the track was carried out, a new drainage system was built and of the photometric system of the runway at the airport was completely replaced.

Especially for the realization of the project near the airport were built new, modern production plants for polymer modified asphalt with a capacity of 240 tons per hour.

The project was completed in cooperation with the Ministry of Transport, Information Technology and Communications, Directorate General “Civil Aviation Administration,” BULATSA, District Administration – Varna and the Directorate for national construction control.

In November 2011, Fraport Twin Star Airport Management signed the contract for the construction of the new terminals with the selected constructor, Turkish consortium TIE-ICDAS.

The construction of the two passenger terminals is estimated to cost the concessionaire a total of BGN 130 M.

As early as July 2011, the concessionaire of the Bulgarian Black Sea airports Varna and Burgas Fraport Twin Star Airport Management announced plans to invest BGN 170 M in their modernization in the next 3 years.

Since the spring of 2010, there have been seven flights a week on the Varna-Moscow line, which were increased to 14 in the spring of 2011. At the beginning of summer season 2012, flights on each line will go up to 21 a week without restrictions in the number of seats offered per flight, informs Bulgaria’s Transport Ministry.

According to the Ministry, the increase of flights will lead to the increase of capacity of the Varna-Moscow and Burgas-Moscow lines and improve services for Russian tourists next summer.

The Transport Ministry of the Russian Federation has awarded its Bulgarian counterpart with the order Gold Chariot for strengthening partnership in aviation.

Maja, a two-year old Polish girl from the city of Lublin, received a special welcome to  Varna, as she became Varna airport’s one millionth passenger for 2011.

The lucky girl, who is in Bulgaria for the first time, was welcomed by the airport’s director Dimitar Kostadinov and deputy director Plamen Hristov, who gave her a big flower bouquet and a lot of presents.

The girl’s parents, Sylvia and Michal Fliss, expressed their gratitude for the extraordinary welcome. The family has decided to spend its summer break at the Golden Sands resort near Varna.

Some 50 000 Polish tourists have been processed at the Varna airport since the beginning of 2011. Poles are thus the airport’s fourth most frequent visitors after Russians, Germans and Bulgarians.

Meanwhile, also on Friday, Bulgaria’s Foreign Ministry announced that the 300 000th visa to Bulgaria has been issued in Russia since the beginning of 2011.

Photo: Varnautre.bg