Bucharest-Henri Coandă Airport, also known as Bucharest-Otopeni Airport (IATA: OTP, ICAO: LROP), is the main airport serving the city of Bucharest, the capital of Romania. It is named after Henri Coandă (1886-1972), an engineer, scientist and pioneer of Romanian aerodynamics.
In the area where the airport is located today there was a military facility with a 1,200-metre runway, used between 1940 and 1944 by the Third Reich Air Force and then, from the end of World War II to 1965 by the Romanian Air Force.
In 1965, it became clear that Bucharest’s only civil airport, Bucharest Băneasa Airport (now Aurel Vlaicu International Airport), would no longer be sufficient to withstand the increasing air traffic, and a new airport was decided. The choice fell on the existing military structure of Otopeni: the works lasted about 4 years and focused on the construction of the passenger terminal and the extension of the runway to 3,500 meters.
In 1969, the first civilian flights began. A new development occurred in 1986, with the inauguration of the second runway, of equal size and parallel to the previous one, which allowed to reach the capacity of 35 air movements per hour.
In September 2004, the airport’s name was changed to Henri Coandă, a pioneer of aviation, on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of civil aviation operations.
In the three-year period 2008-2011 the construction of the new terminal was completed and in 2012 the construction of the new departure terminal, equipped with a new baggage handling system.
Recently the construction of a new railway-metro line that connects the main railway station (Gara de Nord) with Otopeni airport.
