Romanians pay 600 million euros to travel by plane

The local air travel market last year reached more than 600 million euros, which is double the level registered three years ago, following the about 20 percent increase in sales of traditional airlines and the booming low-cost travel segment, which was almost inexistent in 2005.

The sales of traditional companies on the local market reached 416.7 million euros last year, 12 percent more than in the previous year, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). The low-cost airline market was about half the traditional airline market last year, considering the only operator on this segment three years ago was local airline Blue Air.

The low-cost operators Blue Air, Wizz Air, MyAir, Sky Europe, Germanwings, easyJet and Ryanair transported about 2.5 million passengers to and from Romania, while regular airlines reached an over 6 million passenger figure on the local market, according to an IATA survey. With its impressive traffic growth, Romania followed the lead of Poland, which, three years after its European Union accession saw its airline traffic double.

Ziarul Financiar