Near 100 km/h Gusts Disrupt Flights and Redirect Aircraft at Sofia Airport

Strong winds disrupted operations at Sofia’s Vasil Levski airport, leading to a series of delays and cancellations that affected passengers throughout the day. Videos posted on social networks captured the situation inside the terminals, where travelers, including well known Bulgarian actors, reacted to the unfolding problems.

Ivan Diaskov, Deputy Director General of the State Air Traffic Control, explained on BNT that the intense southerly wind created significant challenges for flight operations. According to him, six aircraft were redirected to other airports and five flights were canceled altogether. He stressed that in weather conditions like these, the final decision to land is always made by the aircraft commander. Controllers are responsible for giving accurate, real time data on wind speed and direction, which can vary between the runway and the approach paths, but the judgment call belongs to the pilot and is coordinated with the airline’s operations center.

Diaskov pointed out that the situation was caused by the Foehn effect, a phenomenon that generated gusts reaching close to one hundred kilometers per hour and produced unstable wind direction along the runway. He noted that even colleagues with more than twenty five years of experience described the day as unusually difficult and something they could not recall encountering in the past.

Some of the aircraft that had been diverted due to the extreme wind conditions have since returned to Sofia. At the moment, the airport is still experiencing wind gusts of around sixty kilometers per hour, but operations remain stable and no new diversions have been reported. Diaskov advised passengers to stay calm during such weather events, emphasizing that safety procedures are followed strictly in every situation.