One of the aircraft, presented at the recent the international air fest SIAF 2011at Sliač airport, was a BAe 146 regional jet airliner. This plane was presented jointly by Letecké opravovne Trenčín, a.s. (LOTN, Aircraft Repair Company Trenčín JSC) and the British company Falko (an aircraft asset manager company. The development of the BAe 146, then designated HS.146, was started by Hawker Siddeley in 1973, but soon the project was abandoned due to the world economic downturn. However, in 1978 Br...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Thursday, September 8, 2011 12:35:12 AM CEST
The nonprofit ACI (Airports Council International) organization, which is the only worldwide association of airports, has recently released its World Annual Traffic Report for 2010. This report documents a strong rebound from the two-year industry slump. Global passenger traffic rose by 6.6 per cent, topping the 5 billion passenger mark for the first time. Middle East (+12%), Asia-Pacific (+11.3%) Africa (+9.5%) and Latin America-Caribbean (+13.2%) regions showed high growth while Europe and Nor...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Tuesday, September 6, 2011 10:43:13 AM CEST
We certainly do not see many light aircraft produced by the US manufacturer Mooney here at our airport. However, one such plane landed here recently. It was a Mooney M20K (designated also as Mooney 231), construction number 25-0539, bearing the Swiss registration HB-DGC. The aircraft was manufactured 30 years ago, in 1981. The Mooney Airplane Company was founded in 1929 by aviation pioneer Albert (Al) Mooney, which designed his first airplane when he was 20. This company went bankrupt and his se...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Saturday, August 20, 2011 4:20:26 AM CEST
One of the interesting planes which landed here recently was a twin-engine turboprop Piaggio P.180 Avanti with the Czech registration OK-PIA. It is the first Avanti registered in the Czech civil aircraft registry. Avanti is a so-called canard-type aircraft, showing a pair of small wings on the front fuselage. These forward wings have flaps that move in concert with main wing flaps. Another interesting feature of Avanti is the “reverse” mounted engines with pusher propellers. And, last but not le...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Thursday, August 18, 2011 7:49:25 PM CEST
Many of the passengers traveling from Prague to Košice (or vice versa) aboard a CSA ATR plane would be unable to tell if the are sitting in a “long” ATR (ie ATR 72) or a “short” one (ATR 42). Well, this ambiguity does exist any more, since CSA has recently retired its whole ATR 72 fleet. This retirement came after some 19 years during which these turboprops served on CSA regional flights and were regular visitors also on Slovak airports in Bratislava, Košice, Žilina and Poprad. The last commer...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Saturday, August 13, 2011 8:18:01 PM CEST
(June 18, 2011) In addition to the planes of charter airlines which regularly fly our holidaymakers to various destinations, we sometimes see a plane of a “strange” airline parking on our apron. Such was for example a Boeing 737-400 in the colors of AirExplore which we spotted here recently. Well, AirExplore sounds English, but it is a quite new Slovak airline which started its operation last spring. The “dash 400” we saw here recently is the first plane of AirExplore. The full designation of th...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Friday, July 29, 2011 1:30:45 AM CEST
Tuesday June 28 was – in terms of passenger traffic – the busiest day at our airport so far this year. Total number of enplaned and deplaned passengers was 2.643, of which 2.039 were passengers on charter flights from/to Košice. On late afternoon that day four charter planes were parked on our airport at once. Three of them belonged to the Czech company Travel Service, one was a Bulgarian Air Charter plane. Curiously enough, all three Travel Service aircraft were of the same type (B737-800), but...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Wednesday, July 13, 2011 8:21:17 AM CEST
One of the most interesting aircraft which have visited our airport in the past few months was a multipurpose amphibious aircraft Beriev Be-200 which stopped here just to refuel on its flight from Taganrog to Paris. The Be-200 was designed by the Beriev Aviation Company, with the participation of the Russian Irkutsk Aircraft Production Association. This plane was designed for fire fighting, search and rescue, maritime patrol, cargo and passenger transportation. First flight from land was origina...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Monday, July 4, 2011 10:16:33 PM CEST
One of the most interesting aircraft which visited our airport in recent time was certainly an An-32P turboprop, belonging to the Ukrainian Ministry for emergency situations. The An-32 was designed by the O. Antonov design bureau in Kiev. In short, the An-32 is basically a reengined An-26. The aim was to design an aircraft which would withstand adverse weather conditions better than the standard An-26. This was achieved mainly by using more powerful AI-20DM turboprops, producing 3,812 kW (5,112 ...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Saturday, June 18, 2011 8:30:42 PM CEST
You may have heard that the Swedish star duo Roxette has performed in Košice recently. While the duo used a regular ČSA flight to arrive in Košice, they were brought back home by a Beechjet 400A bizjet. This type has a quite interesting history. The aircraft was originally designed by the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries as Mitsubishi MU-300 Diamond. The plane, powered by two 11.1kN (2500lbf) P&WC JT15D4 turbofans, first flew on August 29, 1978. Its wings feature so-called supercritical airfoil i...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Saturday, June 18, 2011 6:23:46 AM CEST
Our airport is an entry point of many personalities, celebrities and other VIPs coming to Košice. Just for change we will, from time to time, mention some of them here in this column. Recently, the CERN’s director general Prof. Rolf-Dieter Heuer arrived in Košice aboard a flight from Bratislava.If you are interested just a little bit in nuclear or particle physics you certainly have heard of CERN. This acronym means Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Council for Nuclear Resea...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Friday, June 17, 2011 12:26:35 PM CEST
They did not visit our airport very frequently, but we have seen them once in a while. The Czech military transport aircraft of the An-26 type. Anyway, they will not appear here – or elsewhere – anymore. The engines of the last An-26 of the Czech Air Forces were switched off for the last time at the Praha-Kbely airport on April, 26. This marks the end of the service of the An-26 type in the Czech air force. The An-26 was chosen, at the beginning of the 80ties, as a replacement of the obsolete ...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Monday, June 6, 2011 10:14:23 AM CEST
Recently, a German Army CH-53G with serial number 84+72 (construction number V65-070) landed at our airport to refuel (en route from Bulgaria home). The CH-53 Sea Stallion is the most common name for the Sikorsky S-65 family of heavy-lift transport helicopters. Originally developed for use by the United States Marine Corps, it is also in service with Germany, Iran, Israel, and Mexico. The prototype of this heavy transport helicopter (designated YCH-53) made its first flight on October 14, 1964...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Sunday, May 29, 2011 3:22:25 AM CEST
Even when the Ice Hockey World Championship 2011 is over, we would like to mention here one interesting aircraft, which brought the Swedish national hockey team to Košice. They arrived aboard a BAe ATP turboprop, which is quite a rare aircraft – only 64 were produced and so you do not see it very often at European airports (the exception being Sweden). British Aerospace announced it was developing an advanced derivative of the Hawker Siddeley 748 in March 1984. The BAe ATP, or Advanced TurboProp...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Saturday, May 28, 2011 7:09:32 PM CEST
A new permanent exposition was recently opened in the Museum of aviation (belonging to the Slovak technical museum in Košice), located in the vicinity of our airport. This exposition is entitled Aircraft technologies – development of aircraft construction. The main aim of this exhibition is to present, at least to some extent, the development of the construction of airplanes and helicopters. The aircraft on display were prepared in such a way (by, for example, removing some covers or parts of sk...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Tuesday, May 17, 2011 11:26:58 PM CEST
All national ice hockey teams who play their games in groups B and C within the preliminary round of the 75th IIHF World Championship arrived to Košice by plane (except of “unhappy “ French who landed in Cracow). Most of the teams were transported on regular Austrian Airlines flights from Vienna. These flights are usually served by a Tyrolean Airways (operating under the Austrian Arrows brand) DHC-8-Q402 turboprops. However, to bring teams, officials and members of the press to Košice Tyrolean...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Wednesday, May 11, 2011 5:44:26 PM CEST
One of the recent visitors to our airport was Challenger 300, a bizjet manufactured by the Canadian company Bombardier. Even when bearing the name Challenger, the 300 is technically not related to other Challneger series (600 and 800). The project for a new super-mid-sized bizjet was launched at the Paris Air Show on July 13, 1999, at which time it was called the Bombardier Continental (because the plane had to be able to should be able to fly nonstop across American continent). The jet was ...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 3:11:38 AM CEST
Number of Russian bizjets is rising, but they are still quite rare visitors at our airport. However, we recently saw, within a short period of time, two of them parking on our apron. First of the two was bizjet with the registration RA-02810, owned by the Aerolimousine company which – as it says on its webpage – became, in 1988, the first Russian company operating bizjets. Aerolimousine fleet consists of three Yak-40 aircraft and one RA-02810 registered HS-125-700A bizjet. The plane has constr...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Monday, April 25, 2011 7:32:52 PM CEST
The Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental successfully began its flight test program on March 20, taking off from Paine Field in Everett, Wash., before several thousand employees, customers, suppliers and community leaders. The airplane landed four hours and 25 minutes later at Boeing Field in Seattle. The 747-8 Intercontinental's first flight marks the beginning of a flight test program that will finish in the fourth quarter. The airplane reached a cruising altitude of 19,000 feet (5,791 meters), and a...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Saturday, April 23, 2011 1:47:01 PM CEST
In the civil aircraft register of Slovakia two aircraft of the Beechcraft Super King Air B200 type are inscribed – they are registered as OM-FLY and OM- TAA. Recently the second of the two Slovak “super kings”, OM-TAA, visited our airport. This plane is owned by Universalinvest LLC and operated by Tatra JET. Its previous Slovak registration was OM-ALE. The plane with the construction number BB 1975 was first delivered to an undisclosed private customer in April 2007 and registered in Ita...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Thursday, April 21, 2011 1:08:29 PM CEST
