Burgas gets new Wizz Air base and two new airlines
Wizz Air will add seven routes this summer from Burgas, for a total of 14 routes. The Black Sea Coast airport will be the ULCC’s second base in Bulgaria after Sofia.
Burgas is to have a new Wizz Air seasonal base this summer, while easyJet and Blue Air will both begin service. All three announcements were made within 24 hours of each other.
Wizz Air will base one A320 at Burgas from June with seven additional routes operating for about three months. Only one route, Poznan, was served by the carrier before; it ended in 2013.
Six markets – Cluj-Napoca, Dortmund, Eindhoven, Kyiv, Liverpool, and Turku – haven’t been served this decade. Now, Cluj will have two airlines this summer: Wizz Air and Animawings.
Read more: Blue Air to begin multiple new routes from Cluj-Napoca.
As is often the case, cutbacks from other carriers – even if temporary – partly explain these new offerings. Note that BH Air has not yet announced its full summer schedule and further changes may occur.
For example, currently:
- Tel Aviv had three airlines in 2019, but will now have two
- Amsterdam had three in 2019, but is now down to two
- Helsinki, while some 168 kilometres from Turku, had three in 2019 but now one
- Kyiv Boryspil had three in 2020, but now one
- Manchester had four airlines in 2019, but now three
This summer, Burgas’ top country markets will be the UK, Russia, Poland, Bulgaria (Bulgaria Air’s Sofia connection), and Ireland, OAG data shows.
| Airline | Burgas from… | Start date | Weekly frequency: when begins | Direct competition (WF): when begins | Indirect competition (WF): when begins |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blue Air | Cluj-Napoca | 20 June | 2 | Animawings (1) | None |
| easyJet | Berlin | 02 July | 2 | Sundair (2) | None |
| easyJet | London Gatwick | 02 July | 2 | TUI (4) | Wizz Air: Luton (7); Jet2: Stansted (2); BH Air (1) |
| Wizz Air | Dortmund | 10 June | 3 | None | Bulgarian Air Charter: Düsseldorf (3); Sundair: Düsseldorf (2). (Eurowings will begin Düsseldorf from 5 July.) |
| Wizz Air | Eindhoven | 13 June | 2 | None | Corendon: Amsterdam (2); TUI Netherlands (1) |
| Wizz Air | Kyiv Zhulyany | 11 June | 3 | None | SkyUp (2): Kyiv Boryspil |
| Wizz Air | Liverpool | 11 June | 2 | None | TUI: Manchester (4); Jet2: Manchester (3); BH Air: Manchester (3) |
| Wizz Air | Poznan | 11 June | 2 | LOT Polish (1) | None |
| Wizz Air | Tel Aviv | 10 June | 3 | None, but Blue Bird (7) from 30 June | None |
| Wizz Air | Turku | 13 June | 2 | None | Norwegian: Helsinki (2) |
| Source: airline websites and OAG Schedules Analyser. Note that competition changes for some markets later in the summer. | |||||
Last year Bourgas Airport reported 85% down. This year (2021) the summer season will not be much more positive, so this changes the structure of demand and respectively – the nature of the traffic : from massive charter to limited scheduled operations. Non-leasure traffic is minimal. Good luck to Wizz, however if the charter volumes would come to pre-Covid-19 levels, the will be in trouble to fill their flights. For the winter chances are close to zero.