Satu Mare: Romania's best airport

Having written a couple of weeks ago about Bucharest Baneasa, Romania’s worst airport, time to give a little credit where it is due and write about the best: Satu Mare.

Satu Mare airport in the north of Romania is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the world’s busiest. One small plane takes off for Bucharest each night at 7pm; it returns again the next day.

That’s more or less the full flight schedule.

Nevertheless – with an optimism we can only applaud and encourage – the big sign above the airport proudly reads ‘Satu Mare International Airport.’

One day, perhaps.

As things stand now, however, the staff have plenty of time on their hands. This usually in Romania leads to negligence of duty, laziness, or worse. Not at Satu Mare.

In fact, given the level of personal service, we have decided to rate it Europe’s best airport.

Though you no longer get a hand-written boarding pass (as we used to; we have kept and treasured said piece of paper), your luggage is still carried to the plane by friendly, joking baggage handlers. Getting through security takes seconds, not tens of minutes. At boarding time, instead of an almighty scramble for the door, a man comes around and collects your boarding pass. You then walk to your plane along a leafy avenue more akin to the garden of a country retreat than an airport.