Pančevo Airport (''Аеродром Панчево'' or ''Aerodrom Pančevo'') is an airport near the city of
Pančevo
Pančevo (Serbian Cyrillic: Панчево, ; german: Pantschowa; hu, Pancsova; ro, Panciova; sk, Pánčevo) is a city and the administrative center of the South Banat District in the autonomous province of Vojvodina, Serbia. It is located on ...
,
Serbia
Serbia (, ; Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe, Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Bas ...
near
Belgrade
Belgrade ( , ;, ; Names of European cities in different languages: B, names in other languages) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city in Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers a ...
. The airport is mostly used for
general aviation
General aviation (GA) is defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as all civil aviation aircraft operations with the exception of commercial air transport or aerial work, which is defined as specialized aviation services ...
operations. It has a single grass runway 1,000 metres long and 60 metres wide.
The airport is also used by
Utva Aviation Industry, a manufacturer of light sporting and training aircraft also located in Pančevo, for testing its aircraft.
History
On 15 March 1923, aircraft of the Franko-Rumen company started operations from Pančevo airport. A few days later on 25 March, services between Paris and Istanbul via Pančevo commenced, the first international flights to or from Belgrade. On 9 September the same year, the first aircraft took off on a scheduled service from Belgrade to Bucharest. This was also the first commercial night flight in the history of aviation.
CFRNA (Compagnie franco-roumaine de navigation aérienne) decided that flying at night was the only way for its aircraft operating on the Paris-Belgrade-Bucharest-Istanbul service to beat the famous ''
Orient Express
The ''Orient Express'' was a long-distance passenger train service created in 1883 by the Belgian company ''Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits'' (CIWL) that operated until 2009. The train traveled the length of continental Europe and int ...
'' train to Istanbul.
Franco-Roumaine changed its name to
CIDNA (Compagnie internationale de navigation aérienne) in 1925, which used Pančevo Airport until May 1927.
See also
*
List of airports in Serbia
References
External links
Pančevo airport information (PDF)
Airports in Serbia
Buildings and structures in Vojvodina
Airport
An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. Airports usually consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surface ...
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