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Bulgaria in an AvGas aircraft

what is an “Echo-Flugzeug”?

a plane with a D-Exxx registration, iow a SEP.
Likewise, an ultralight is “ein M-Flieger”.

Last Edited by at 26 Feb 09:51
EBZH Kiewit, Belgium

To Peter,
The Site is not mine but I am the second top reporter.

LGGG

Hello Robert,

my information is from 2011 when I did my trip to BG, so it may be outdated.

Avgas is available in Sofia, Burgas, Primorsko, Gorna Oryachovitsa and several other small airports like Lesnovo near Sofia.

To my knowledge, you need to enter Bulgaria via an Airport of Entry, even when flying in from the EU. That is one of the major issues AOPA BG is working on, to at least have 2 or 3 of their smaller airports, which are quite numerous, equipped with full immigration and customs. So far to my knowledge, it is not possible however. This leaves Sofia, Plovdiv, Gorna Oryachovitsa, Varna and Burgas as points of entry or exit.

What I did at the time is fly to Belgrade and fill up with full fuel as it is probably the cheapest in Europe and also the cheapest airport of that size (I paid 16 Euros on a tech stop transit and 30 when I forgot to put that in the flight plan), plus BEG has a superb service. Land there, the guy in the little car turns up and you can pay right on the tarmac, he will call the fuel, also paid right there. If you do not need to go inside, that is it, 20 mins turnaround achievable, if you do, he will take you in and out for free.

Thereafter I flew to Plovdiv, as at the time it was the cheapest place to do customs (no Avgas however.) and my mother in law lives there and from there to Primorsko. Took on full avgas in Primorsko and retraced my way back via Plovdiv to Belgrade. Burgas has both customs and avgas, but avgas was EXTREMELY expensive there, up to twice the price of Primorsko, where it was about 2.50 Euros.

What I heard is that AOPA has reached an agreement with Sofia, Burgas and Varna airports to massively reduce cost of fees there if you have an AOPA membership card, like they did in Greece apparently. A good way to find out more is to talk to them, Rosen Marinov, their president, writes back in English pretty fast usually and is really knowledeable.

The BG AIP is fully available at the Eurocontrol AIP Portal, also all VFR charts. When I flew there, only Sofia had VFR routes published, now all of them do and some are quite elaborate. Be prepared that if you file a flight plan in BG that Sofia Control will modify it heavily and give you the route to fly.

One bit which you need to know in BG are the loads of danger areas they sport. It can happen at the blink of an eye that almost all of Southern Bulgaria goes shut when thunderstorms turn up and they start shooting anti hail rockets. Happened to me in 2011, beautiful wether but all the areas closed so had to fly the next day.

AOPA Bulgaria
Rosen Marinov can be reached via the contact form or at r.marinov (at) aopa.bg.

Link

News item about the new airport charges at Sofia and Burgas/Varna at AOPA.BG (2nd and 3rd item)
Plovdiv was already very cheap so I guess they saw no need to include it. Gorna Oryachovitsa was reported to be ok but very cumbersome to deal with.

If you have any more questions, fire away I will try to find out.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

That one – despite being German only – has more traffic, more airfield infos

Probably because you bosco contributed about half the Pireps Thank you anyway!

LSZK, Switzerland
14 Posts
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