Updated: 2005-11-23

  New Sofia Airport Strip Ready Mid-2006

  Novinite.com

  Business: 23 November 2005, Wednesday.

  The new airstrip for Sofia airport will be operational by the middle of summer 2006, authorities announced after Transport Minister Petar Mutafchiev visited the construction site on Wednesday.

  February 2006 was the deadline for the completion of the strip, but the construction would not be ready in time.

  Sofia Airport's CEO Kalin Barzov explained that the airstrip's composition was completed and 2,500 meters of the strip have been built during the past three months. It would be 3,600 meters long and the airplanes would lift off a kilometer earlier compared to the old strip. This would decrease the sound pollution significantly, Barzov said. The lighting and connections between the new and old strip are yet to be constructed.

  The new airport terminal is also almost ready and it would be operational before the airstrip, probably in the beginning of the summer.

  When asked, Mutafchiev explained that all contract parties that are culpable of slowing down the construction works would be sanctioned.

  << Back to list of articles