SOF Connect completes Sofia Airport takeover; now the hard work starts
One of the last airport ownership or concession deals to be concluded before the pandemic, at Sofia in Bulgaria, was delayed pending appeals from every one of the losing parties. Those appeals were rejected in Nov-2019, but it is only now that the winning consortium has fully taken over the operation of Sofia Airport.
What SOF Connect has taken on is not exactly what it signed up for, as the airport has, in common with almost all others, lost a great deal of its traffic, and a recovery in capacity is taking place only very slowly.
But there are some underlying issues also at Sofia, both at the airport itself - such as an imbalance in favour of foreign LCCs and a lack of alliance capacity, which renders the airport non-mainstream - and in the wider country of Bulgaria, which has the undesired title of Europe's poorest.
The consortium has a job on its hands to satisfy its objectives and its 'mission', and the global airport investment community will be watching closely how it goes about it.
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