Bucharest's main airport sits at Otopeni, on the site of an old military airfield north of the city. It opened to civilian flights in 1965. It took over international flights that had outgrown Baneasa, the older airport near downtown. Through the communist era, it served as the base for TAROM, the state airline, which flew an Eastern bloc fleet plus Western jets like the BAC One-Eleven and Boeing 707.
After 1989, the airport modernized in stages. It added new departure and arrival terminals, plus a second parallel runway. In 2004, it was renamed Henri Coanda International Airport, honoring the Romanian engineer and aviation pioneer. The low-cost boom then transformed everything. Wizz Air made Bucharest one of its largest bases anywhere, and Ryanair moved in as well. Blue Air grew rapidly too, before it collapsed suddenly in 2022.
When Baneasa stopped handling scheduled low-cost flights in 2012, all commercial traffic moved to Otopeni. Passenger numbers then climbed far past what the original design ever expected. Constant crowding in the small terminal has pushed plans for a new building. A rail link to Gara de Nord, the main train station, finally opened in 2020. Before that, travelers relied on a slow bus for the trip into the city.