Many airlines have custom to paint one of their aircraft in so-called retro livery which the company used on all its aircraft some decades ago. This is usually done to commemorate some special event in the history of the company. Czech Airlines now belong to such companies, too, since they had one of their B737-500s aircraft (OK-XGB) repainted in the livery, which was first used on the first jet aircraft of the then Československé aerolínie - on the Tu-104 aircraft bearing the registration OK-LD...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Wednesday, January 25, 2012 10:52:07 PM CET
When you are frequent flyer you probably have flown aboard one or another version of the Boeing 737 twin-jet airliner. Currently produced versions of the popular seven-three-seven belong to the 737 NG (Next Generation) family. However, these planes slowly become – mainly due to the progress in the engine efficiency – obsolete. Therefore Boeing started, in 2006, to ponder the development of a brand new family of aircraft (internally named Boeing Y1). However, when Airbus launched the improved Air...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Wednesday, January 18, 2012 3:26:27 PM CET
As you may know Austrian Airlines flies ten times a week from Vienna to Košice and back (on some days there are two flights). Until recently both flight were operated by turboprop De Havilland DHC-8 (or Dash 8, if you wish) aircraft. Now the afternoon flight is (usually) operated by a Fokker twin-engine jet airliner Fokker 70. This airliner is a smaller (that is – shorter) version of the 100-seat Fokker 100 jetliner. The Fokker 70's first flight occurred on April 4, 1993. The type was certifie...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Friday, January 6, 2012 7:01:11 PM CET
You might have seen it flying over Košice every so often recently – a twin-engine turboprop in a blue-white livery. It is a Let L-410UVP Turboprop, construction number 912616, bearing the Czech registration OK-WYI. The plane, equipped with special measuring equipment for inspecting the ground aviation facilities, is operated by the Civil aviation authority of the Czech republic. This airplane was manufactured in 1991 for the Russian Aeroflot airline which did not take it up. In 1994 the plane wa...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Tuesday, January 3, 2012 8:16:23 PM CET
You may – or may not – know that famous Spanish Catalan tenor José Carreras (his full name is Josep Maria Carreras i Coll) gave a concert here in Košice recently. Carreras arrived here aboard a 525C Citation CJ4 bizjet with German registration D-CEFA. The plane with construction number 525C-0044 belongs to the German charter company EFD Eisele Flugdienst GmbH based in Stuttgart. The company uses the marketing name E-Aviation. The Cessna Citation CJ4 (Model 525C) is part of the Citation busines...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Tuesday, January 3, 2012 5:54:16 PM CET
Due to bad weather at the destination airport the plane must be diverted to another airport. That’s why a Tu-204 landed here recently. The plane carrying a Torpedo Nizhnyj Novgorod ice-hockey team should have landed at Poprad airport which was closed due to low visibility so that the plane was diverted to our airport. It was a Tu-204-100B plane bearing the Russian registration RA-64050 – the last digits of this registration indicate that the plane is the 50th produced aircraft of this type. This...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Tuesday, December 6, 2011 8:15:26 AM CET
Vipers are unable to fly – unless it is a Viper produced by the Tomark Aero division of the Tomark company, based in the nearby city of Prešov. This company manufactures ultralight (the call them microlight) planes of the Viper SD-4 type. Viper was developed by the Tomark experienced aviation and mechanical engineering specialists and is manufactured using the most modern laser and CNC technologies. The all-metal plane is designed for sport, entertainment and recreational flying. The cockpit wit...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Friday, November 25, 2011 6:02:44 AM CET
You may (or may not) know that American company Piper likes to name its aircraft after various Indian tribes. We find types such as Apache, Cheyenne, Cherokee, Comanche, Navajo and Seminole in the Piper range of aircraft. Recently saw a Piper Cheyenne parked on our General Aviation apron. It was a PA-42-720 Cheyenne III with construction number 42-8001064. The plane bears the Israeli registration 4X-CBF and its former registration was N932BF. The prototype of the first PA-31T Cheyenne model ma...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Friday, November 25, 2011 3:47:23 AM CET
Looking at the profile of the aircraft in the picture, which animal does it resemble? The cue is just below the cabin window. Yes, it is dromader, ie the single-humped camel. An airplane named Dromader stayed here overnight recently. It was a single-engine agricultural aircraft of the M-18 Dromader type, which was manufactured by PZL-Mielec (now belonging to the Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation) in Poland. PZL-Mielec, then known as WSK-Mielec, began to design the Dromader in the mid 1970s, with hel...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Thursday, November 17, 2011 10:24:54 AM CET
No, we do not mean a woman passenger whose name is Fatima – but, who knows, maybe there was a lady called Fatima among passengers who arrived at or departed from our airport. What we have in mind is an airliner which has been given the name of Fatima. It is an A320-232 aircraft bearing the Egyptian registration SU-NMB and belonging to the Egyptian Nesma Airlines.which used it for a number of flights between Košice and Hurghada in the holiday season. The plane has construction number 1732 and i...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Sunday, November 6, 2011 2:32:52 AM CET
The four-engined turboprop transport aircraft of the An-12 type is quite a rare visitor to our airport. However, recently we saw one parking on our apron. It was an An-12Bk plane with Belarusian registration EW-275TI, whose construction number is 00347210 and which was manufactured in 1970. The plane first served in the Soviet military transport aviation, then received the Soviet civil registration CCCP-13392, which was later changed to RA-13392. In 2008 it received the above-mentioned Belarus...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Saturday, November 5, 2011 11:07:33 PM CET
Airliners usually bear some specific livery or – which is modern term – titles, so that you can recognize which company the plane belongs to. However, sometimes you see a plane with no titles at all. Such an aircraft appeared recently at our airport. It was an A320 of the Tunisian airlines Nouvelair, which brought our holidaymakers from/to Tunisia. The plane of the A320-214 type, construction number 1597, bears registration TS-INP and made its first flight almost exactly ten years ago, on Septem...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Tuesday, October 11, 2011 10:18:28 AM CEST
We do not see many British registered bizjets here at our airport. Anyway, one – registered as G-VECT - landed here recently. G-VECT is Cessna 560XL Citation Excel with construction number 560-5161, manufactured in 2001. The plane is owned by the British charter company Bookajet based at Farnborough (where the famous air shows take place). Excel is an interesting bizjet since it was designed as a completely new aircraft, but it is rather something like puzzle, put together using parts from var...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Monday, October 10, 2011 3:53:07 PM CEST
One of the aircraft, presented at the recent the international air fest SIAF 2011at Sliač airport, was a BAe 146 regional jet airliner. This plane was presented jointly by Letecké opravovne Trenčín, a.s. (LOTN, Aircraft Repair Company Trenčín JSC) and the British company Falko (an aircraft asset manager company. The development of the BAe 146, then designated HS.146, was started by Hawker Siddeley in 1973, but soon the project was abandoned due to the world economic downturn. However, in 1978 Br...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Sunday, September 18, 2011 2:35:12 PM CEST
The nonprofit ACI (Airports Council International) organization, which is the only worldwide association of airports, has recently released its World Annual Traffic Report for 2010. This report documents a strong rebound from the two-year industry slump. Global passenger traffic rose by 6.6 per cent, topping the 5 billion passenger mark for the first time. Middle East (+12%), Asia-Pacific (+11.3%) Africa (+9.5%) and Latin America-Caribbean (+13.2%) regions showed high growth while Europe and N...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Friday, September 16, 2011 2:43:13 AM CEST
One of the interesting planes which landed here recently was a twin-engine turboprop Piaggio P.180 Avanti with the Czech registration OK-PIA. It is the first Avanti registered in the Czech civil aircraft registry. Avanti is a so-called canard-type aircraft, showing a pair of small wings on the front fuselage. These forward wings have flaps that move in concert with main wing flaps. Another interesting feature of Avanti is the “reverse” mounted engines with pusher propellers. And, last but not le...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Sunday, August 28, 2011 11:49:25 AM CEST
We certainly do not see many light aircraft produced by the US manufacturer Mooney here at our airport. However, one such plane landed here recently. It was a Mooney M20K (designated also as Mooney 231), construction number 25-0539, bearing the Swiss registration HB-DGC. The aircraft was manufactured 30 years ago, in 1981. The Mooney Airplane Company was founded in 1929 by aviation pioneer Albert (Al) Mooney, which designed his first airplane when he was 20. This company went bankrupt and his se...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Friday, August 26, 2011 12:20:26 PM CEST
Many of the passengers traveling from Prague to Košice (or vice versa) aboard a CSA ATR plane would be unable to tell if the are sitting in a “long” ATR (ie ATR 72) or a “short” one (ATR 42). Well, this ambiguity does exist any more, since CSA has recently retired its whole ATR 72 fleet. This retirement came after some 19 years during which these turboprops served on CSA regional flights and were regular visitors also on Slovak airports in Bratislava, Košice, Žilina and Poprad. The last commer...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 6:18:01 AM CEST
(June 18, 2011) In addition to the planes of charter airlines which regularly fly our holidaymakers to various destinations, we sometimes see a plane of a “strange” airline parking on our apron. Such was for example a Boeing 737-400 in the colors of AirExplore which we spotted here recently. Well, AirExplore sounds English, but it is a quite new Slovak airline which started its operation last spring. The “dash 400” we saw here recently is the first plane of AirExplore. The full designation of ...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Monday, August 8, 2011 11:30:45 AM CEST
Tuesday June 28 was – in terms of passenger traffic – the busiest day at our airport so far this year. Total number of enplaned and deplaned passengers was 2.643, of which 2.039 were passengers on charter flights from/to Košice. On late afternoon that day four charter planes were parked on our airport at once. Three of them belonged to the Czech company Travel Service, one was a Bulgarian Air Charter plane. Curiously enough, all three Travel Service aircraft were of the same type (B737-800), but...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Sunday, July 24, 2011 4:21:17 AM CEST
One of the most interesting aircraft which have visited our airport in the past few months was a multipurpose amphibious aircraft Beriev Be-200 which stopped here just to refuel on its flight from Taganrog to Paris. The Be-200 was designed by the Beriev Aviation Company, with the participation of the Russian Irkutsk Aircraft Production Association. This plane was designed for fire fighting, search and rescue, maritime patrol, cargo and passenger transportation. First flight from land was origi...
Administrator Kosice Airport
Friday, July 15, 2011 8:16:33 PM CEST
