Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Please note: Bucharest to be closed

At the beginning of April I need to fly to the UK. In these days of cheap flights in Europe and various options, this should be no problem (well, once I've driven at least 3 hours to my nearest airport). However at the beginning of April Bucharest is hosting a NATO summit, and in a spectacularly over the top and disruptive move the government has decided to close both of Bucharest's airports for the 3 days of the summit. How utterly ridiculous is that? What a complete waste of time. I've read that they are expecting to redirect flights to Constanta and Timisoara. Now as it goes Constanta is not that far from Bucharest in Romanian terms, but Timisoara is something like a 12 hour train journey. I've never heard of another country doing something so short-sighted and ludicrous as this. (Of course the airlines are not stupid and flying out of other Romanian airports at that time is correspondingly expensive).

Still, it'll be good for the environment I suppose. Wonder when the person responsible for this will start using that as an excuse?

3 comments:

supercostica said...

No, they've changed their mind after a few days, so the airports are going to remain open during the summit (but some airlines have canceled their flights nonetheless).

Ian Plenderleith said...

Happily, I have no plans to fly to Romania during the affected period.

Gadjo Dilo said...

Andy, fly from Cluj instead, we've got cheap(-ish) WizzAir flights now to London, Rome, Dortmund, Budapest, and soon Milan and Valencia; and other airlines are soon coming here too. Cluj is the new Bucharest! ;-)