SOFIA AIRPORT ASSISTANCE

History Sofia International Airport

On 16 September 1937, Tsar Boris III signed a decree which declared land within the Village of Vrazhdebna be allocated for the construction of an airport.

Construction then began on the site, which was 11 km (6.8 mi) from the city centre. Two years later in 1939, Sofia Airport opened its first passenger waiting room, and after another two years was followed by a fully constructed airfield with a fully paved runway from June through September 1938, Yugoslav airline Aeroput connected Sofia with Belgrade thrice weekly using Lockheed Model 10 Electra planes.

During the Second World War, the facilities were used by the military. Mail, perishable freight and passenger operations began in 1947 from buildings on the north side of the airport. The passenger terminal (now Terminal 1) on the south side was completed during the Second World War in the manner of a then-modern European railway terminus to designs by the architect Ivan Marangozov. It opened after several years of delay in 1947. The structure comprised a government wing to the west, an international handling area in the middle, and a domestic handling area to the east. At that time, it was planned that the airport would eventually have two intersecting runways at a 30-degree angle to each other.

The terminal had substantially reached its capacity of some 600,000 passengers a year by the later 1960s and was subjected to a number of refurbishments and extensions beginning in the spring of 1968. In 1975, a new international arrivals handling extension was opened to the west of the building, the domestic area to the east was enlarged, the government handling area was removed to a dedicated terminal some distance to the west, a VIP handling area opened in the old terminal, apron area was extended to the east and new taxiways opened. A bonded warehouse opened to the east of the terminal square in 1969 and several new hangars followed to the east of the first maintenance base in the 1970s. A new checked baggage handling system opened to the north of the building in the early 1980s, cosmetic and traffic reorganising refurbishments were carried out in 1990, with a substantial landside extension following in 2000.

By the late 1970s, the terminal was handling in the region of three million passengers a year, a million of them on domestic routes. Passenger numbers fell off sharply after the 1979 CMEA ("Comecon") oil price shock and recovered to just over a million a year by the late 1980s. In the early and mid-1990s, domestic traffic practically ceased, while foreign traffic reduced significantly. The latter began growing apace in the late 1990s and early 2000s to reach its current levels. The terminal was last refurbished partially in 1990. In 2000, it underwent a wholesale update in which the international arrivals area was moved to the east wing where domestic handling had been, the former international arrivals area to the west was closed, and the layout of the central international departures area was changed in line with world developments. Despite the work to the old terminal, the airport was becoming overwhelmed with passenger traffic.

Ground Transportation Sofia International Airport

• Bus: Three bus routes serve the airport. E84 and E184 connect both terminals to Sofia University, with E84 departing from Terminal 2 and calling at Terminal 1 on the way, and E184 doing the loop in reverse, departing Terminal 1 and calling at Terminal 2 on its way to the centre. Bus 384 only serves Terminal 2, connecting it to Tsarigradsko shose Metro Station.
• Car: Brussels Boulevard is the main thoroughfare to Sofia Airport. There is a new, faster road connection built from Terminal 2 to Brussels Boulevard Via Brussels Boulevard and Tsarigradsko shose, Sofia Airport is connected to both the city centre and eastbound destinations via Trakia motorway (A1) Mw A1 BG.svg from the northern parts of Sofia, Sofia Airport is conveniently accessible via the East Tangent route. Its junction with Botevgradsko Shose provides access to northbound destinations via Hemus motorway (A2) Mw A2 BG.svg Connecting to the southern parts of Sofia and Southwestern Bulgaria is the route via Brussels Boulevard and Boulevard Aleksandar Malinov to Sofia ring road Nat road 18 BG.svg which has an interchange with southbound Struma motorway (A3) Mw A3 BG.svg.
• Train: A railway station at Iskarsko shose was inaugurated in April 2015, providing faster interchange from the airport to southbound services on the Bulgarian national railway system. Situated about 2.5 km (2 mi) from Terminal 2, the train station is accessible via a short trip to Iskarsko shose Metro Station which is two stops away from Sofia Airport Metro Station on the M4 line.

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