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).

Our first trip since the new rules and regulations regarding taxis to and from Otopeni Airport were introduced on February 1st, allegedly for our convenience.

Since that date, regular Bucharest taxis have been forbidden from entering Otopeni’s car parks, where they used to wait for clients who had ordered them (clients eager to avoid the Fly Taxi monopoly).

This is not, at first glance, a problem if you are headed to the airport. Until you try to get a taxi to the airport, that is.

We tried four on Wednesday morning, all from good, trustworthy Bucharest taxi companies (there is always a clutch of them hanging around on the corner of our street).

None would take us to the airport.

The reason? There are two.

1. There is an increased police presence at the airport now, who check that all taxis dropping clients off have the rovinieta (road tax). As the rovinieta is only compulsory when travelling outside Bucharest, few taxi drivers have it. Alas, Otopeni is beyond Bucharest’s city limits. The fine for no rovinieta is 50 lei.

2. As they can’t hang around the car park (or indeed the entire vicinity of the airport) after they have dropped you off, the chances of them getting a fare as they go back into town is greatly reduced.

We did finally manage to get a taxi to Otopeni, but only after going back to the office and calling one, specifying that we would need a car with the rovinieta. It took a while, and it is a good job the underpass has been finished, else it would have been touch and go as far as catching the flight was concerned.

Easy solution to problem (1) is to exempt taxis coming to and from Otopeni from the rovienieta.

As that involves joined up thinking do not expect it to happen.

The wealthy, or those who like to see monopolies thrive can ignore this post…

It is much easier than you think to avoid the monopoly held by expensive taxi company Fly Taxi at Otopeni Airport, Bucharest main airport. (Of taxis at Baneasa airport, stand by for a separate post).

Fly Taxi, to remind you, charges a whopping 3.50 lei per kilometre, meaning that you will get little – if any – change from 100 lei when taking a Fly Taxi into the city. Romanian newspaper Adevarul touched on Fly Taxi last week as part of a wider investigation into general rip-offs practised at the airport.

Though Fly Taxi is the only company allowed to park its taxis right outside arrivals, there are ways around the monopoly (which do not involve the bus or the minibus-train combo).

Option 1:

Call a taxi from any of Bucharest’s trusted taxi companies. You will find their names and numbers at Bucharest In Your Pocket, here. You will need to wait ten minutes or so, and taxis from other companies can’t stop right out front: you will need to wait for it in the car park, opposite.

Option 2:

People still seem unaware of the fact that there is now (and has been for sometime) a walkway from Arrivals to Departures. Turn right as you exit baggage claim and keep going. Once at Departures, simply go outside and pick up an ordinary taxi as it drops somebody off. Easy. You never have to wait more than a couple of minutes, except after 9pm or so, after which few planes depart, and this tactic does not work.