Berlin airport winter schedule: Wizz Air keeps Sofia year-round as Ryanair exits
Berlin's airport switches to its winter schedule on Oct. 25. The Sofia route stays at four flights a week while Ryanair closes its base.
Symbolic image · Photo: Arne Müseler / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 de (cropped and resized)
Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER) switches to its 2026/27 winter schedule on Oct. 25. Among the routes staying is Wizz Air's service to Sofia: the low-cost carrier has flown to the Bulgarian capital four times a week since September, and the route is to be offered year-round. Wizz Air is also adding Suceava in Romania from Dec. 17 and Sarajevo from Dec. 3.
The changes come at a difficult time for the airport. Ryanair is closing its Berlin base with seven aircraft on Oct. 24 and says it is cutting its capacity there by about half. Twelve destinations will be dropped, including Thessaloniki, Vilnius, Tallinn and Marseille, amounting to roughly 2.5 million fewer seats a year. BER expects about 25.7 million passengers in 2026, down from 26.1 million in 2025, and only 25 million to 25.2 million in 2027.
Airport chief Aletta von Massenbach called Ryanair's withdrawal “a heavy blow” and said other airlines would only partly make up for the loss. She said she understood “the frustration” at Ryanair over high costs in Germany: “Everything they say against BER, they say against Germany.”