On 8 August a Brașov dentist named Yevgen Bragaru stepped off flight W4 3537 from Nuremberg and became the millionth passenger to pass through Brașov-Ghimbav. The airport had been open for three years, one month and 24 days.
Three days later, Wizz Air said it would base an aircraft here.
Those two announcements landed in the same week, and the second one is the bigger story. Until now, every flight from Ghimbav has been flown by an aircraft that slept somewhere else — Bucharest, Cluj, Budapest — and came to Brașov as part of a longer day. From December, one Airbus A321neo will start and finish its day at Ghimbav. That changes what the airport can offer, and it explains why four more destinations are suddenly on sale for the winter.
Here is the year in one table.
| Route | Starts | Days | Status on 13 August |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rome Fiumicino (FCO) | 28 January | Mon, Wed, Fri | Flying |
| Katowice (KTW) | 31 March | Tue, Thu, Sat | Flying; pauses 24 Oct |
| Warsaw Chopin (WAW) | 9 June | Tue, Sat | Flying; pauses 24 Oct |
| Valencia (VLC) | 3 November | Tue, Thu, Sat | On sale, not yet flown |
| Chișinău (KIV) | 17 December | Tue, Thu, Sun | On sale, not yet flown |
| Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden (FKB) | 18 December | Mon, Fri | On sale, not yet flown |
| Barcelona (BCN) | 18 December | Mon, Fri | On sale, not yet flown |
| Madrid (MAD) | 20 December | Wed, Sun | On sale, not yet flown |
Naples, Nuremberg, Memmingen and Milan still feel new to a lot of local passengers, but they all began flying in autumn 2025 and are not part of this year’s intake.
Rome, and the difference an airport code makes
Wizz Air opened Rome on 28 January, three times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Local reporting described full aircraft in both directions on the opening rotation, which carried around 300 passengers in and out of Brașov; more than 350 flew the following day. Inaugurals are stacked in an airline’s favour, though, so the more telling detail is that the route has held its three weekly frequencies ever since.
The useful detail is in the airport code. Rome flights go to Fiumicino (FCO), the city’s main international airport, which sits at the end of a 32-minute Leonardo Express run into Roma Termini. Plenty of low-cost Rome services land at Ciampino instead, and the transfer eats an hour that a long-weekend trip does not have.
Operating days have moved around during the year. Check the dates you actually want on the airline’s site, then look at our live departures and arrivals board in the week you travel.
Two Polish routes that do two different jobs
Katowice and Warsaw get lumped together as “the Poland flights”. They suit very different trips.
Katowice began on 31 March, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and moved up to an A321neo from 11 June. The airport serves Upper Silesia, and it is also the cheapest realistic way to reach Kraków from Brașov. Be honest with yourself about the ground leg, though: Katowice airport is about 30 km from Katowice itself and roughly 90 km from Kraków, which is around 90 minutes on the airport coach or on a bus-and-train combination. Budget the transfer time before you compare the fare against a connecting itinerary.
Warsaw followed on 9 June — the airport’s tenth destination — with two weekly flights on Tuesdays and Saturdays and a block time of about 1h40. The launch timetable had the outbound leaving Brașov at 16:10 and the return arriving back at 15:35, and introductory fares started at 129 lei.
Warsaw’s real appeal is what happens after you land. Chopin has a far wider European and long-haul network than Ghimbav will have for years. Just be clear about what you are buying if you use it that way: a Wizz Air ticket followed by a separate ticket on another airline is a self-connection, and if the first flight runs late, the second airline owes you nothing. Leave hours, not minutes.
Both Polish routes are seasonal. The current booking calendar ends them on 24 October, with Katowice returning on 30 March 2027 and Warsaw not until 8 June 2027. If you were thinking about a Kraków Christmas market, that is the sentence to remember.
Valencia is about the diaspora, not the weather
Valencia starts on 3 November, three times a week on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, operated by Wizz Air Malta on an A321neo.
It is easy to read this as a sun route. It is more likely a diaspora route. More than 100,000 Romanians live in the Valencia region, and Wizz Air has built a large part of its Romanian network on exactly that kind of traffic. The airport has also been talking to Castellón, the smaller airport up the coast, for the same reason.
The last scheduled link between Brașov and Spain was Fly Lili’s, which flew to Barcelona until the end of October 2024 and then to Madrid from that December before the airline’s problems caught up with it. Both cities come back in December, this time on Wizz Air.
Valencia is on sale but has not flown yet. Launch dates around the summer-to-winter schedule change are the ones most likely to move.
What a based aircraft actually changes
From December, one A321neo — 239 seats in Wizz Air’s layout — will be stationed at Ghimbav. It is the airline’s tenth Romanian base, and Wizz says it comes with around 40 maintenance jobs.
For passengers, three things follow from an aircraft that overnights locally:
- Earlier departures and later arrivals. A based aircraft can push off the stand at 06:00 because it and its crew were already here. A visiting aircraft cannot leave before it arrives, which is why Ghimbav’s schedule has clustered in the middle of the day.
- Better recovery when something breaks. Local crew and a local aircraft give an airline more room to rebuild a disrupted day. It is no guarantee, but a delay at a based airport is easier to fix than a delay at an outstation.
- Routes that need an overnight turn. Short evening-out, morning-back city pairs only work with an aircraft that stays put. Several of the December additions fit that shape.
The four new routes: Chișinău from 17 December, three a week on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, from 99 lei. Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden and Barcelona from 18 December, twice a week on Mondays and Fridays, from 139 and 159 lei respectively. Madrid from 20 December, Wednesdays and Sundays, also from 159 lei. Those are lead-in fares on selected dates, not what you should expect to pay in the week before Christmas.
Wizz Air’s release puts the resulting network at 15 destinations in seven countries. Count the booking calendar yourself and you may reach 14 — the totals shift depending on how you treat the routes that pause for winter.
Winter reshuffles the board as well as extending it
Ten Wizz Air destinations are on the summer board right now: London Luton, Budapest, Dortmund, Memmingen, Nuremberg, Milan Malpensa, Naples, Rome, Katowice and Warsaw. Adding four in December does not mean fourteen year-round routes, because the board loses entries at the same time.
Naples finishes on 21 October. Katowice and Warsaw pause three days after that. Once the winter schedule settles, six destinations run right through the year: Dortmund, Memmingen, Milan, Rome, London Luton and Budapest.
Nuremberg is the interesting case. It vanished from the booking system for dates after 15 September, which read like a quiet cancellation. Airport management pushed back publicly — Schaeffler’s operations in the county make it a business route as much as a leisure one — and Wizz Air not only kept it but expanded it from 26 October. Routes at small airports are argued over more than the timetable lets on.
The charter programme: six announced, four flew
The summer board also carries direct holiday flights to Antalya, Heraklion, Hurghada and Monastir, operated by Tailwind, AnimaWings, HiSky and Sky Express between them.
Six charter destinations were announced for summer 2026. Palma de Mallorca and Larnaca were both pulled before they operated after selling badly. That is worth knowing in general terms: charter seats are usually sold inside a tour operator’s package, they run for a defined holiday window, and they depend on the operator filling the aircraft.
Being discussed, not bookable
At Routes Europe 2026 the airport pitched a long list of carriers — Corendon, Pegasus and AJet on Istanbul, Swiss on Zurich, Air Serbia on Belgrade, Sky Express on Athens and Thessaloniki, Euroairlines on Spanish cities. General manager Daniel Micu described it as opening communication channels and hoped the talks would “materialise soon, at least in part”.
Treat all of that as conversations. None of it is announced, dated or on sale, and route talks routinely go nowhere.
Before you book
Confirm your dates are actually loaded with the airline that operates the flight, read the baggage rules before you pay, and check the GHV flight board again in the week you travel. If it is your first departure from Ghimbav, our five things to know before flying out covers arrival times, parking and what is open airside. Arriving rather than departing? The three-day trips guide is a better starting point, and our summer 2026 outlook tracks how the season has actually run.
A million passengers in three years, and an aircraft of its own from December. Ghimbav has stopped being an experiment.
Sources checked 13 August 2026: Wizz Air’s Brașov base announcement via Economica and Biz Brașov, Monitorul Expres on the millionth passenger, Brașov Airport’s current flight board, AeroRoutes on Katowice and on Valencia, Biz Brașov on the winter timetable and on the Valencia launch, and BZB on the Routes Europe 2026 discussions. Schedules and fares remain subject to airline changes.