60 civilian planes per hour cross the airspace of Bulgaria, and most of them pass through here because of the closed skies of Ukraine. This is shown by data provided by the State Enterprise “Air Traffic Management” (ATC), quoted by “Telegraph”.
From there, they reveal that the war in Ukraine had drastic consequences for the congestion of air traffic in the native sky. The main part of the reason is that the airspace over Ukraine is closed to civil flights and this causes thousands of flights to be redirected over Bulgaria.
An additional number is coming due to the introduction of safety buffers for flying over the airspace of Belarus and Russia. In Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania, reserved areas have been set up near Ukraine because of the danger that planes could be mistakenly hit by missiles.
Serious traffic over Bulgaria is also due to Russia’s decision to close its airspace to airlines from the European Union (EU) and Great Britain.
“Because of all this, there is a reorientation and redistribution of major flows and the accumulation of additional and uncharacteristic of the region’s traffic,” said the ATC.
For example, in March 2022, 44,228 aircraft flew through our airspace, which is an increase of nearly 100% compared to the same month a year earlier (23,513 flights). Part of the growth is certainly due to the gradual global recovery of the aviation sector after the pandemic, experts say.
However, they point out that in March in particular, the growth on an annual basis is more than twice as high as in January and February, which is mainly due to the fact that many planes orbit the Ukrainian sky. However, the number of overflights in March 2022 still lags behind that in the last pre-pandemic 2019. In March, three years ago, 53,892 planes flew over our country.
A concrete effect of the ban on flying over Russia is the diversion of a large number of flights between Europe and the Far East through our skies, which provides one of the few opportunities for intercontinental flights.
Serious traffic has been diverted over our country to and from Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, India and others. Other atypical flights over the country are from North America to the Middle East, which chooses it as the shortest flight planning option. Thus, among the airlines that redirected flights over Bulgaria are the Japanese ANA, Air Canada, American Airlines, the Polish LOT, Luffhansa, Swiss, KLM, Austrian Airlines and British Airways.
The ATC acknowledges that changing the traffic mix, increasing complexity and workload are serious challenges. However, the state-owned enterprises are adamant that they have full capabilities to service the increased number of flights with quality and safety.
BGN 500 fee for a big machine across our sky
About BGN 500 is the fee that the airlines pay for the passage of a transcontinental flight through the Bulgarian sky, according to estimates of the Air Traffic Control. Fees vary according to the route of the aircraft over Bulgaria and its maximum take-off mass. The calculation is specifically for the Airbus aircraft
A330 with an approximate maximum takeoff weight of 242 tons and a 300-kilometer flight over our country. For such a flight the service fee would be BGN 460.
It is expected that the revenues of the ATC, which are 90% formed by taxes on flights, will have an increase compared to those of 2021 (BGN 137 million), but still lag behind those of the last year before the pandemic of 2019. (BGN 264 million).
The tax units in our country are determined on the basis of a Plan of Effectiveness of the State Enterprise ATM approved by the European Commission, which the company is proud to have adopted without remarks in Brussels.
They expect a drop in flights to the sea
While the air traffic controllers in the ATC are busy with the flying flights, their expectations are for a significant decrease in the traffic from / to the domestic airports.
“The complex political situation in the region could have an impact on the tourist season for Bulgarian Black Sea resorts, which would have a negative impact on the number of international flights to Bulgarian Black Sea airports. “Despite the observed total recovery from COVID-19, it is not yet possible to determine how many flights to these airports there will be in the upcoming season,” said the ATC.
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