The city has two airports.

The oldest and closest to the city, Băneasa Airport (tel.: 9371), serves low cost companies, as well as charter and private flights. The airport faced more and more pressure because of the extensive residential area South of it (and its proximity to the city proper), and all regular traffic, including all low cost carriers, will move to the Henri Coandă as of March 25, 2012. The airport will serve only business and private flights afterwards.

Built in 1971, Henri Coandă, a. k. a. Otopeni Airport (tel.: (021)2041000), located 10 km. further on the road to Ploiești, still serves most of the flights. Tarom is the Romanian national airline carrier. Both Băneasa and Otopeni airports are served by bus #783 (that runs every 15 minutes on weekdays and every 30 minutes on weekends, it works with 2 rides cards bought from the aluminium RATB kiosks; it goes on the following route: Otopeni – Băneasa – the Arch of Triumph – Victory Square - Romană Square – University Square – Unirea Square), while Băneasa is also served by regular city buses (that work on regular tickets bought from the same kiosks), # 131 and 301 from Romană Square. There also exists bus #780 from both airports to București Nord Railway Station. The bus stop in Otopeni Airport lies as you exit the domestic arrivals terminal to the right (from the international arrivals terminal, take the elevator or the escalators down to the ground level, then exit and turn to the right). There also exists a shuttle + train service from Bucharest Henri Coandă Airport (Otopeni) to București Nord Railway Station; it takes around 45 minutes for the transfer from the airport to Bucharest’s station. As you come out of luggage claim and customs, in the public area (still inside), look for the CFR kiosk, get your ticket (RON 6.00) and then exit, look for the coach (or van, sometimes they replace the coach with a 16 seat van), it will take you to the makeshift railway station in Otopeni (10 minutes), where a train to București Nord Station departs every hour (30 minutes). The 6 RON ticket covers both the bus and the train ride. Trains run hourly between 05.00 AM and 11.00 PM (approximately). Check out this website for up-to-date schedules for the train (kindly keep in mind the fact that the bus from the airport starts around 25 minutes before the train). Type in “București Nord” for Bucharest main railway station, respectively “P.O. Aeroport H” (yeah, exactly like that, otherwise you get nada) for the makeshift station in Otopeni the train uses. As always in Romania, do not rely on tight train connections, allow at least 20-30 minutes for safe commuting. If you need to go farther than București Nord Station by train, you can do all your tickets at the CFR ticket office in the airport. During most days (week days, but also on Saturday and Sunday afternoons), this is the fastest and hassle free way of getting to the city (as from the railway station you can get on the subway).

In front of the international arrivals terminal (on Otopeni OTP) there are nowadays taxis belonging to TaxiFly which are allowed to wait there. They charge almost twice more than a regular taxi (around 3 RON / km. as compared to the others’ RON 1.39-1.80 / km.), but regular taxis are only allowed to drop clients at the departures terminal and then they have to flee. Therefore, go to the departures terminal (there is a hallway linking it to the arrivals terminal), walk out and look for reputable companies such as CrisTaxi, Cobălcescu, Meridian, Getax, Leone, Rodell, 2000. A ride from the airport to the centre should never go over the equivalent of RON 40 (usually it is RON 25-30). Never, under any circumstance, take an offer anyone would come to you with in or in front of the terminal. If in doubt, restrict your options to bus # 783 / # 780 and TaxiFly, even though I recommend against supporting the TaxiFly monopoly.