Airports with less than 1 million-passenger traffic annually need 150m euros to develop

Cătălin Radu, general manager of the Civil Aviation Department of the Transport and Infrastructure Ministry (MTI), says he has filed an application with the European Commission to get 150m-euro funding so that airports with a traffic of below one million passengers annually can develop.
"Romania has 16 airports, of which only two have over one million passengers annually. Should the application we sent to Brussels for a funding scheme as part of the transport sectoral operational programme be approved over the following weeks, then small airports will be able to file projects for runway and platform rehabilitation," stated Cătălin Radu, during the Airport Forum 2010 event organised by Finmedia.
The programme may benefit airports of Sibiu, Iaşi, Oradea, Constanţa, Cluj-Napoca and another nine airports in the country.
However, the biggest airports in Romania, Henri Coandă and Aurel Vlaicu, will not be able to benefit from the scheme, as they operate under the National Airport Company Bucharest and will register total traffic of almost 7 million passengers, according to Tudor Jidav, general manager of the company.