In the Balkans, is air traffic more driven by tourism, diaspora, or geography?

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Pineloko@reddit

obviously can’t have a lot of domestic air travel in small countries

where will you fly in slovenia when everything is 2min away

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Im actually very confused where the 0,1M even came from if thats actually domestic flights. Unless its sports airplane and helicopters and that. In which case i dont understand how some other countries have 0

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12358132134@reddit

General aviation, repositioning flights, sightseeing tours etc.

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Equivalent_Twist_977@reddit

But how can others than have 0?

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Zeonist-@reddit

For Turkey's domestic flight, it is at least partially caused by the lack of proper public transportation

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TurkOmbre@reddit (OP)

I would say it's more because of the size of the Turkey (geographical).

Because a large part of Turkey has good roads between major cities, and we are the only Balkan country with a developed railway network.

Btw Turkey is in the top 10 countries with the most domestic flights.

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Archaeopteryx111@reddit

Turkey is not the only Balkan country with a well developed railway network. Romania has a huge railway network due to communism.

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Elmalukat@reddit

And horrible roads despite 20 years in EU.

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Archaeopteryx111@reddit

Roads aren’t horrible anymore. Romania has more highways per capita than Turkey these days.

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Elmalukat@reddit

The state roads in Turkey are almost all dual carriages and in perfect condition. Romania does not.

Also Turkey considers Highways only the paid ones which are top quality.

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EarlGreyKv@reddit

This has got to be the most meaningless stat, highways per capita?

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Archaeopteryx111@reddit

Or per area as well.

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EarlGreyKv@reddit

Don’t tell me man, tell it to the people who are trying to travel by road between Bucuresti and Brasov on a Saturday, waiting behind traffic queues for hours just because there’s a country road they have to use around Sibiu that happens to have several zebra crossings on it. Let’s see if they also think Romania has a great road network and highways everywhere.

I see why you’re getting defensive and I understand, but it’s ok to call it what it is. They’ve been slowly building the new highways, starting from around Bucharest and growing, and it’s going to be great once it’s finished, but it just now isn’t that good atm.

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TurkOmbre@reddit (OP)

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Archaeopteryx111@reddit

Here is a better map.

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TurkOmbre@reddit (OP)

Unelectrified lines? I didn't even know that existed in 2026.

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SoulEkko@reddit

Maybe you should learn to properly use AI first.

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Archaeopteryx111@reddit

Yes, a legacy of communism.

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TurkOmbre@reddit (OP)

But those are unused lines, so your map is irrelevant in this case. Mine is much clearer.

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Archaeopteryx111@reddit

They are still used.

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Happy-Hour88@reddit

It takes forever to get from Craiova to Budapest. I know because I've checked ways to go from Sofia to Budapest by train since it's not possible to buy a ticket from Sofia through Serbia anymore.

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Archaeopteryx111@reddit

They just built a new international airport in Craiova.

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Happy-Hour88@reddit

Yeah but I hate flying and try to avoid it as much as possible.

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Happy-Hour88@reddit

Great, at least one country in the Balkans invests properly in the more comfortable ground transport. Long distance coach rides are uncomfortable.

Btw the Sofia - Thessaloniki connection shown doesn't exist anymore, supposedly it's under construction.

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Dear-Ad1582@reddit

"Romania has a huge badly mantained, under used railway network." There I fix it for ya...

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Archaeopteryx111@reddit

Yes, but the major railways are being renovated

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Dear-Ad1582@reddit

With a snail pace sadly...

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camelBackIsTheBest@reddit

You can take coach to any city. Turkey has an excellent intercity network. You have no idea what you’re talking about.

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Zeonist-@reddit

Let's agree that we have a different definition for 'excellent intercity network'.

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camelBackIsTheBest@reddit

Which city or town you can’t go with public transport? You can go to literally any city from another and then take another bus to smaller places and you want me to not call this system excellent? It exists and it’s working in terms of functionality. You absolutely cannot do this in the united states.

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Substratas@reddit

Albania’s total number of tourists in 2025 was 12.4 million, not 10 million.

https://english.gazetatema.net/economy/albania-sees-record-124-million-tourists-in-2025-i343808

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TurkOmbre@reddit (OP)

This is airpassengers not tourists, it is not the same thing

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ThickCaterpillar9867@reddit

Air passengers were 11.6 million in 2025

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dwartbg9@reddit

Romanian numbers are definitely strange, considering the country is a way less popular tourist destination. It feels like a big number of their international arrivals are diaspora. Romania doesn't get 20 million foreign tourists which will make them even more visited than Croatia.

The top 3 most visited countries on the Balkans (excluding Turkey) are: 1. Greece 2. Croatia 3. Bulgaria

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hero_in_@reddit

I think the whole ChatGPT data from OPs is made up. 1.3 mln domestic flights for Bulgaria? Bulgaria air has 3-4 flights daily from Sofia to Varna and only during summer months 1 time a day to Burgas. Even if we consider 10 domestic full capacity flights a day that will make max 700k passengers for the whole year. What am I missing here? The real number should be like 400k.

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dwartbg9@reddit

All his posts are absolute BS, it's like the guy just discovered AI and started making random posts with the most basic prompts and without any check if the data that the AI spit out is real or not... OP is one of these modern AI zombies that don't realize that not everything the LLM gives them is accurate and it usually gives you absolute bullshit stats and data.

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hero_in_@reddit

https://sofia-airport.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Statistics-BG-2026-02-1.pdf

Apparently there were 114 364 travelers from Sofia to Varna for 2025 (at the bottom of the pdf file). Let's double it so we include people who are traveling from Varna to Sofia. And that is with 4 flights per day. To Burgas the flights were 6 times less cause Burgas Airport was closed until end of March and then closed for renovation again as of October.

so that would make 300 k travelers at best. At least 4 times less than what OP claims.

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dwartbg9@reddit

Just a small correction - OP doesn't claim anything. It seems that he discovered ChatGPT recently and is now obsessed with making bullshit posts made with bullshit data from it.

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mikewazoski59@reddit

Whoa what's up with Turkey?

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sokartes123@reddit

Istanbul is the hub for Turkish Airlines. Turhish Airlines is flying to 131 countries, largest number of countries by far and it's also at top 10 in other metrics too.

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deviendrais@reddit

Cheap hair transplants in Istanbul

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iamunwhaticisme@reddit

Russians can only fly to Europe through Istanbul Airport. Also, Istanbul and Antalya are among the top 10 most visited cities in the world.

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KakaoFugl@reddit

No, it’s because of Turkish Airlines. They fly everywhere and they always have to connect in Istanbul if you’re not flying from Istanbul directly. Istanbul is therefore a big hub.

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iamunwhaticisme@reddit

You are right, but I'm not wrong either.

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jaunmilijej@reddit

Yes

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Big-Vegetable4550@reddit

I think Türkiye is also pretty busy with international travel because Turkish Airlines (who I love to fly) has pretty aggressively under pricing other international airlines.When I was traveling for work a few years back, business class flights from Houston to Paris on Air France were $6,000, while the route on Turkish Airlines via Istanbul was $2,000 (if 20 hours longer duration with overnight in the new airport).

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SpiritedAddition8206@reddit

I think it’s only to Istanbul the prices are like this. For most people I know Turkish airlines is too expensive for their budget

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GroggAll@reddit

It's normal for Turkiye to be N1. It's the biggest land mass and about 100 million people.

I truly don't believe Bulgaria has 1.3M domestic flights tho......

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dwartbg9@reddit

Yup. The data is again out of Chat GPT's ass as usual with OP's posts.

On the other hand though, the total number seems correct this time, but as you said, we definitely don't have so many domestic flights. The total number divided between our 4 international airports for 2025 is 12,3 million.

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