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Budget airlines grow Bulgarian ops 

No-frill carriers Wizz Air, EasyJet, Germanwings, Aer Lingus and Sky Europe catered for around 26.5% of passengers carried through the Sofia airport in the first half of the year, the facility said on its website. The airfield serviced 1.523 million passengers in January to June. The five low-cost airlines controlled about 20% of the market last year and 12% in the first half with the growth largely driven by new flights by Wizz Air and EasyJet. Hungarian Wizz Air, tipped as the market leader flying to one domestic and seven international routes, plans to launch a flight to Eindhoven from October. Wizz Air will fly from Bucharest to Catania, Naples and Bologna from September to handle passengers previously serviced by Italian May Air, which sliced 2% of the market in 2008 but lost its licence in July 2009. Irish Aer Lingus will fly again from Sofia to Dublin in the autumn-winter season using until then the Black Sea Burgas airport as Germanwings will service flights to Hamburg from the fall. The five short-haul carriers posted mixed results for January to June. While British EasyJet was scooping profits in the period, Slovakian SkyEurope slipped into insolvency and sought bankruptcy protection after losing 27.5% of passenger numbers by the end of June. Wizz Air has not published fist-half financial figures but expects a surge in passenger traffic to 8 million this year from 5.8 million last year. Aer Lingus saw a 6.5% drop in passengers in the first six months of the year as Germanwings reported a 7.7% decline, having scaled down its capacity by almost 10%. On a global scale, air traffic dwindled by 7.2% in January to June under data by International Air Transport Association (IATA). International players captured 74% of the Bulgarian aviation market and carried 2.574 million passengers, according to numbers of the Bulgarian Airline Association (ABA).