30 March 2025
(Photo: Aliaksandar Burakou/DW)
Chisinau Airport is breaking records - in 2024, it handled 4.1 million passengers, up 46% compared to the previous reporting period.
With this indicator, the air harbor is among the top most successful in Europe in the Medium category - from 1 to 10 million passengers per year, DW reported.
Chisinau was ranked second in terms of efficiency by Airports Council International (ACI Europe), with a profit of €17.7 million.
The beginning of 2025 is also a record: in January, 330 thousand passengers were served, which is 62% more than a year earlier, and in February, the growth was 50.2%. Up to a third of passengers are Ukrainian citizens, reflecting the impact of the war on traffic in the region. The growth in passenger traffic due to Ukrainians has been recorded for the second year in a row.
According to DW, buses are now departing from Odesa to the Moldovan capital every hour, and flights from Kyiv or Vinnytsia are also heading there. Stanislav Ghiletskyi, deputy director of research at the Chisinau-based Institute for European Policies and Reforms, who previously served on the council of experts at the parliamentary commission on economics, notes that Ukrainians have changed the structure of flights from Chisinau.
"They started flying to destinations that were not popular in Moldova. Given that the share of Ukrainian passengers reaches 30%, it is clear what a good bonus the airport has received," he emphasized.
Due to the increase in passenger traffic, Chisinau airport has already become cramped and is currently expanding the waiting area by closing duty free shops. Moldovan Infrastructure Minister Vladimir Bola has set a goal of increasing its capacity to five million passengers by 2025.
Кирило Бойко