On July 2, Bulgarian daily Dnevnik reported that six months after the new terminal at Sofia Airport was opened, it would soon reach its full capacity of 2.6 million passengers.

According to Dnevnik, the new terminal was designed to reach its full capacity of 2.6 million passengers a year by 2009. The whole airport handled 2.2 million passengers up to the end of 2006. In May this year, Sofia Airport statistics showed a 21 per cent increase in airport traffic year-on-year. In the first five months of 2007, 1 053 202 passengers passed through the airport. Moreover, in April the airport recorded a 27 per cent passenger increase year-on-year, while for May the growth was 21 per cent.

The way this information was interpreted by some media is misleading. If the above percentage increase were just of travelers to and from the new terminal, there indeed would be a concern regarding the terminal's capacity. However, as specified by the airport, those are numbers for passenger traffic for the entire airport, which includes passenger flights to and from the new terminal, as well as the old one. Therefore, to say that because in 2006 2.2 million passengers were handled by the airport and this is the reason for worry about the new terminal's capacity would be wrong. Despite the growth of passenger traffic each month, there may not be a reason for panic quite yet that the new terminal will soon reach its full capacity of 2.6 million.

According to Dnevnik, Transport Minister Petar Mutafchiev has said that a meeting of experts is to be held to discuss possibilities for expanding the terminal.

However, Yasen Zlatev, head of Airport Directorate at the Ministry of Transport, said he knew nothing about any plans.

Sofia Airport also did not want to comment to The Sofia Echo whether a meeting for an airport expansion was on the way, but Krasimir Dimitrov, the airport's press officer said that "generally there are plans for extension." Although there is no official information yet, Dimitrov said, more will be known in September. "For now, there is no need for worry. We have back-up plans of how to deal with an increase in passengers," Dimitrov said without specifying what those back-up plans are.

Perhaps one obvious plan would be better use of the old terminal. It is currently being used only by low-cost airlines and charter flights, resulting in much of its potential going to waste.

In the meantime, Dnevnik also reported that the conceptual designs for the construction of the new terminals at the Bulgarian coastal airports Varna and Bourgas airports are ready and the two new terminals will work with low-cost airlines. This was said by Tihomir Trifonov, the executive director of Fraport Twin Star Airport Management (a subsidiary of Fraport).

The project was created by the consortium Black Sea Airport Design and envisages that 2000 passengers will be processed an hour at the new Bourgas terminal. A temporary terminal was opened there on June 29 to handle passengers until the new one is built.

With the temporary terminal the departures capacities has increased by 40 per cent. By the end of 2007, Bourgas Airport director Kalin Barzov expects a 10 per cent passenger increase of air travellers year-on-year.