Bălți International Airport

Bălți-Leadoveni International Airport
Aeroportul Internațional Leadoveni
IATA: BZY – ICAO: LUBL
Summary
Airport type Public
Operator S.A. Aeroservice
Serves Bălți, Moldova
Elevation AMSL 231 m / 758 ft
Coordinates 47°50′35″N 027°46′38″E / 47.84306°N 27.77722°E / 47.84306; 27.77722Coordinates: 47°50′35″N 027°46′38″E / 47.84306°N 27.77722°E / 47.84306; 27.77722
Map
BZY

location in Moldova

Runways
Direction Length Surface
m ft
15/33 2,240x42 7,350 Concrete
Source: Airport-Data.com[1]

Bălți International Airport (IATA: BZY, ICAO: LUBL), also known as Bălți-Leadoveni International Airport is one of the two airports serving the city of Bălți, Moldova. Located 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) north of the city center (or 9 km or 5.6 mi from the city limits in Dacia district), in the north of the country, it is the second largest airport of Moldova, servicing cargo and charter passengers flights. Another airport in the area, Bălți City Airport, located within the city limits, is primarily used for emergency interventions of regional importance.

Geography

Bălți International Airport is situated in the northern part of Moldova (ex Soviet Socialist Republic) near the city of Bălți, one of the five Moldovan municipalities, on the land of the commune of Corlăteni (called Leadoven during the Soviet time) in Rîșcani district.

Access

Bălți International Airport can be easily accessed by car, exiting Bălți in the northern direction, and following the E583 highway. Numerous coaches and minibuses used for public transportation connecting Bălți to the northern districts of Moldova stop upon request at the highway–airport access junction.

History

Main article: Aviation in Moldova

The construction of the runway started in 80’s following an order of the USSR Marshal Sergey Akhromeyev, whereas construction of the airport infrastructure (including passenger and cargo terminals, hotel, air traffic control tower, extension of the trolleybus line from Balti to BZY) was left to the local authorities.

The choice of the runway location was carefully made taking into consideration the advanced technical and engineer means and notably the direction of winds and absence of stable fog on location of Bălți International Airport. Contrary to other airports in Moldova, notably contrary to Chisinau airport built in 1960 with available means at that time (Chisinau airport regularly redirects flights to and from Chisinau because of fog to farther airports in Bucharest, Kiev or Odessa), Bălți International Airport can be operated in any weather conditions. Indeed, the runway of Bălți International Airport is located at an altitude of 231 meters, on a top of a hill, with surrounding hills as low as down to 100 meters.[2] Chisinau airport is located in a valley at an altitude of 122 meters with surrounding hills up to 200 meters high.[3]

The first technical flight on the new Balti aerodrome was performed on 28 December 1987 on an AN-24 by representatives of a test commission of the Soviet Moldavian Civil Aviation Authority.

On 31 October 1989 the Soviet Moldavian Civil Aviation Authority established the conformity of the aviation light signals installed at BZY.

On 22 February 1990 the Ministry of Civil Aviation of the USSR and notably the State Design and Prospecting Research Institute for Civil Aviation « Aeroproject » confirmed the pavement classification number and indicated the airplanes which may be operated at BZY with no restrictions : IL-18, AN-12, YAK-42, TU-134.

On 8 June 1990 the Ministry of the Civil Aviation of the USSR delivered to BZY the registration certificate No 190, confirming that airplanes of type TU-134, AN-24, YAK-40 and other types of airplanes of the III rd and IV thcategories may be freely operated at BZY, as well as any kinds of helicopters.

On 31 may 1994 the State Design and Prospecting Research Institute for Civil Aviation « Aeroproject » confrimed also capacity of BZY for operation of TU-154 (one plane per day) and IL-76T (50 planes per year with weight:160 tons / 352,739.6 pounds).

After the official opening in late 1980s, BZY appears to have been operated by airplanes from Chisinau of the former Moldavian branch of the Soviet company Aeroflot. At that time, the airport was called Bălți-Leadoveni International Airport. The name Leadoveni comes from the family name of a Soviet pilot Leadovii, who redirected a crashing airplane from the neighboring (to Balti) village called Corlateni during the Second World War. Corlateni was then renamed to Leadoveni, and renamed again after independence of Moldova back to Corlateni.

Since the 1980s, Bălți International Airport became the most important airport in the north of Moldova. After the independence of Moldova in 1991, the airport was used by Air Moldova, the state company successor of the remaining airplanes of Aeroflot.

According to the former plans, it was planned to build two terminals, one for passenger and another for cargo service, as well as one control tower. Before the break-up of the USSR, the airport was connected, through direct flights, to almost 20 destinations in the former Soviet Union, including Moscow, Kiev, and Sochi.

Aircraft

Bălți International Airport used to be a home base for Tu-134 and Tu-154 passenger jets.

For cargo, different modifications of Antonov jets have used the runway.

Operator

On 12 September 1994, the Moldovan Civil Aviation Authority, pursuant to its order No 79 and following decision of the Moldovan Government No 497 dated 9 August 1993, created the State Aviation Enterprise "Moldaeroservice". Moldaeroservice was created on the basis of the Balti Aviation Enterprise and Balti branch of the State Airline Air Moldova. Mr. Ivan Tomac was appointed as the first director of Moldaeroservice. The Moldovan Civil Aviation Authority had further instructed Mr. Boris Salov, director of Air Moldova at that time, to decide until 15 October 1994 the question of operation of flights on TU-134 and AN-24 from BZY on profitable conditions. Moldaersoervice is a legal person of Moldovan law and is subordinated to the Moldovan Civil Aviation Authority.

Currently Moldaeroservice operates Bălți International Airport, even though no regular flights are being operated and the operational certificate was withdrawn by Moldovan authorities on 14 October 2015 (issued on 5 October 2012), purportedly for the lack of financing of Moldaeroservice.

The state company S.A. "Moldaeroservice", part of the national S.A. "Moldaeroservice" holding, is the operator of Bălți International Airport.

As Moldova was experiencing economic crisis in the 1990s, the re-construction and modernization plans of the airport, as well as the whole aviation industry, were put on hold. Only in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Chișinău International Airport was modernized, with help from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Chișinău International Airport is today the only airport in Moldova operated by regular passenger and cargo routes (about 65% of which are exclusively by Air Moldova)

Bălți International Airport is currently used mainly by irregular charter passenger, and more often by cargo flights. Because of the current economic reality in Moldova and state management, Bălți International Airport cannot boast to be a busy airport. There are no regular connections to the airport today. In between rare flights, the runway serves for Moldavian rallies and open-air concerts, such as ones organized by the mobile operator Orange Moldova.

Facilities


Perspectives

The new role for the Bălți International Airport could be a first hub for low-cost airlines (e.g. EasyJet, Ryanair, Wizz Air) in Moldova and in the whole Southeast Europe region, since the airport in Chișinău remains under the state control of Air Moldova.

One third of all passengers on the daily Chișinău–Frankfurt am Main route come from Bălți and the northern districts of Moldova. Passengers from the north of the country also fly to other destinations, e.g. to Italy (Rome, Milan, Bologna), Spain (Madrid), Portugal (Lisbon), Russia (Moscow), the United Kingdom (London), Turkey (Antalya), and they currently use the airport in Chișinău. A new route to London, proposed by Air Moldova from Chișinău (the only airport where Air Moldova flies from), takes up to 6 hours, with a stop in Paris, whereas the normal flight between such destinations takes up to 3 hours. The Chișinău–Frankfurt am Main route was an object of harsh negotiations between Lufthansa and Air Moldova, just as the Chișinău–Kiev route was. In both cases, German and Ukrainian civil aviation authorities banned Air Molodva from their territories until Moldova would abide to a fair share of traffic with German (Lufthansa) and Ukrainian (Aerosvit Airlines) airlines,[4] and as soon as Air Moldova let a German company (Cirrus Airlines) operate flights to Moldova, Air Moldova was allowed to resume its flights into the German sky.

Important development perspectives also appear for Bălți International Airport in the cargo field, which would generate economic growth for the whole northern region of Moldova, but even possibly for the neighboring regions of Ukraine and Romania. The region boasts an 8% annual GDP growth, and real estate investment projects in Bălți by Western European businesses such as Metro Cash & Carry are some of the growth factors.

The geographic position of Bălți International Airport is internationally important as well, as the nearest airports in Romania (Iași International Airport) and Ukraine (Chernivtsi), and especially in Moldova (Chișinău) are competitive and economically viable only because of credit subventions and strong state protectionism, and much less through normal economic factors.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Information of Bălţi Airport at airport-data.com
  2. ↑ http://geoportal.md
  3. ↑ http://geoportal.md
  4. ↑ "Air Moldova is not allowed to enter Ukrainian airspace". Moldova Azi. 2007-01-30.

External links

Look up aviation in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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