As we discovered on Saturday morning, the difference between getting a taxi at Bucharest’s Otopeni Airport now and getting one before the rules changed on February 1st is that there is no difference. At least not in any real sense. The information we publish about arriving at Bucharest’s airports in Bucharest In Your Pocket and online at inyourpocket.com/bucharest is valid.
The only real difference to before is that instead of Fly Taxi having a monopoly, taxis from certain other companies can now wait outside arrivals too. On Saturday morning though, we saw only cars from Fly Taxi and Grant Taxi. Both are honest and will not rip you off, though it should be noted that they do charge about a third more than bog-standard Bucharest taxi companies.
Nothing else appears to have changed.
You are still besieged by aggressive, rogue taxi drivers as you exit baggage claim, you can still (as we do) walk through to Departures and pick up a bog-standard cab as it drops somebody off, and you can still take the perfectly good bus.
The only thing you can’t do is call a taxi and have it pick you up from the car park: you need to meet it at Departures or at the end of the ramp leading down from Arrivals (by the Marriott clock).
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
If they spammed only ONCE, maybe we would have believed them.
But now we don’t believe them and they’re gonna get their links deleted too.
Indeed, IP now marked as sp*m.
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Hi
I will be arriving at Otopeni airport around midnight on a weekday and wonder what is the best and most cost-effective way to get to sector 2? I have never been to Romania before and have heard lots of diferent stories (mostly bad ones!!) – any help will be greatly appreciated.
Jav
You should be OK with the taxis that wait outside arrivals. At that time of night it will in fact be your only option. Just make sure that you get them to put the meter on: insist on it!
Thanks for the information Craig.
Any particular taxi companies I should try to get hold of… or simply avoid?
Jav
You will be OK with Fly Taxi. Not cheap, but trustworthy at least.
Craig,
I was at Otopeni picking someone up last Friday and was not aware that the rules had changed and was surprised to see yellow Dacia Logans in front of the arrivals hall as before only the Fiat Fly Taxis would be there. I didn’t know what was going on but I still walked down the ramp and picked up a taxi there and got back to my apartment on Stirbei Voda for 28 Lei. It beats the 104 Lei of a Fly Taxi they charged me last autumn.
It was always easy to avoid Fly when you really wanted to. Sometimes though, late at night, it was easier just to jump in one and pay the extra. They were more expensive but at least honest. Now though there are other companies: some of whom we have never heard of.
Hanging around Otopeni for five hours yesterday, I heard plenty of announcements over the PA system, saying how to get the train into the city from the airport. Pretty impressive, I thought, although I didn’t try following the instructions.
Oh, the train. There isn’t one. There is a minibus that takes you to the middle of nowhere, then you hang around in the cold for half an hour until the train appears. The train then trundles at about 20kph to Gara de Nord. Best public transport solution still the bus.
Hey Craig,
Thanks for sharing this info. I’ve never had to worry about getting a taxi from Otopeni (I usually jump right into a rental car), but this kind of stuff is priceless for first time visitors, particularly as Otopeni is legendarily bad as far as reasonable transport into the city.
That said, I may try the train when I land in May. For professional reasons, of course.