Craiova International (CRA) Airport Guide 2026 — The Bus That Runs All Night

Last verified: September 2026.

🏢 1. One Airline, Sixteen Routes, and a Field That Never Closes

Craiova is a single-terminal airport on the eastern edge of Oltenia’s largest city, and its infrastructure is better than its traffic. The airport publishes its own technical data: runway 2,500 m by 45 m, reference code 4C, an apron of 24,000 m² with eight stands plus two alternates, ILS CAT II on 108.7 MHz, a DVOR/DME, and operating hours of H24, seven days a week.

That last line is worth dwelling on. Unlike most airports of this size — including Región de Murcia, Perpignan and half the regional fields in Europe — Craiova does not close overnight. Combine it with a city bus that also runs overnight and you have something genuinely rare: an airport you can reach and leave at 03:00 without a car.

Who flies here, and where

Wizz Air is the airport, on the route map the airport publishes itself, valid from 23 May 2026:

Fifteen Wizz routes and one Animawings route. Venice is the newest, added on 23 May 2026, Tuesdays and Saturdays. Note that Wizz normally uses secondary airports on these city pairs, so check which London, Paris, Brussels and Rome airport your ticket actually names before you book a train at the far end.

The shape of that map is the point. Six Italian cities, two Spanish, two German, one Belgian, one French: this is the Oltenian diaspora timetable, flown for people who work in Italy and Spain and go home for Easter, August and Christmas. It is not a holiday network and it does not pretend to be. Fares behave accordingly — cheap in February, brutal in the second half of December. Run the dates through the aifly price check before you commit to a travel week.

Because one airline carries almost everyone, one airline’s bag policy is the policy here. Wizz’s free personal item is small and its cabin-bag and hold-bag tiers are where the fare goes; our Wizz Air baggage guide sets out the current dimensions and the aifly baggage checker compares it against the others before you pay.

The summer charter programme

Separately from the scheduled map, the airport publishes a charter list each spring, sold through travel agencies in Oltenia rather than online. In the 2026 season it ran weekly departures to Antalya (TAROM on Mondays, and Animawings also on Mondays), Hurghada (Nesma Airlines, Tuesdays), Heraklion (Aegean, Tuesdays) and Palma de Mallorca (AlbaStar, Thursdays), all roughly June to late September. If you want one of these, book through a partner agency — they are not on the airline websites in the ordinary way. Our TAROM baggage guide and Animawings baggage guide cover the two Romanian operators on that list.

🛂 2. Schengen Since 2025, But the Money Is Still Lei

These two things get confused constantly, so take them separately.

Romania is in the Schengen area. The European Commission’s own page puts it plainly: the Schengen area is composed of 29 countries, “with Bulgaria and Romania being the last countries to join on 1 January 2025.” For a flight out of Craiova that means the border desk has gone for most of the map. Thirteen of the sixteen scheduled routes — Bergamo, Bologna, Venice, Rome, Naples, Bari, Barcelona, Madrid, Dortmund, Memmingen, Brussels, Paris and Athens — are now internal flights with no passport control at either end. You still need photo ID, and airlines still ask for it at the gate.

Three routes are not. London and Birmingham are the UK, outside both the EU and Schengen. Istanbul is Türkiye. On those, you cross an external border in both directions.

The Entry/Exit System has been fully operational since 10 April 2026. The Commission states that as of that date “the EES replaces the stamping of passports allowing the automatic detection of overstayers,” registering each non-EU short-stay crossing with “name, travel document data, biometric data (fingerprints and captured facial images) and the date and place of entry and exit.” If you hold a British passport and fly Craiova–London, your first crossing since the system went live is the slow one — that is the biometric enrolment — and subsequent ones are quicker.

ETIAS is not running. The Commission’s live wording is that ETIAS “is currently not in operation and no applications for travel authorisations are collected at this point,” and that the EU “will inform about the specific date for the start of ETIAS several months prior to its launch.” No start date is published. The fee is fixed at €20. Nobody can sell you a valid ETIAS today; every site offering to is taking your money for nothing.

Customs, on the Istanbul and London runs

The airport publishes the third-country allowances that apply when you fly in from outside the EU. Per traveller: 40 cigarettes or 250 g of smoking tobacco, 1 litre of spirits above 22% or 2 litres of wine, 50 g of perfume and 0.25 l of eau de toilette, and other goods to a total value of €430. Travellers under 17 get no tobacco or alcohol allowance at all. Cash of €10,000 or more must be declared on entering or leaving the EU. None of this applies on the thirteen internal flights.

Money: this is a leu country

Romania is in the EU and in Schengen and is not in the eurozone. The currency is the Romanian leu (RON), and at the start of September 2026 the ECB reference rate was 5.2530 lei to the euro — call it 5.25 and expect it to move a little.

Practical rules. Pay in lei, not in euros, whenever a card terminal offers you the choice; the conversion it proposes is always worse than your bank’s. Do not bring euros expecting to spend them — shops, buses and taxis price in lei and many will not take euro cash at all. Card acceptance in Craiova is good, and contactless is normal. Withdraw from a bank ATM rather than an independent machine in the terminal, and decline the machine’s own “conversion” offer when it appears.

🚌 3. Line 8 Runs All Night, and That Changes Everything

There is no train to Craiova airport and no dedicated airport express. There are two ordinary city bus lines, run by RAT Craiova, and one of them is unusually good.

Line 8 — Gară – Centru – Aeroport

RAT’s own description: line 8 runs non-stop, hourly, departing at half past each hour, with simultaneous departures from the railway station (Gara de Nord) and from the airport. Fourteen stops, straight down Calea București:

Gara → Păltiniș → Păcii → Țărăncuța → Piața Centrală → Rotonda → Institut → Viitorul → Helin → Plaiul Vulcănești → Hanul Doctorului → Unitatea Militară Aeroport → Blocuri → Aeroport.

Read that stop list and you have the city: the railway station at one end, the central market and the main hospital area in the middle, the airport at the other. A 24-hour hourly bus between an airport and a railway station is something Bucharest does not have, and at Craiova it costs the price of an ordinary urban ticket.

Line 9 — the western half of the city

Line 9 runs Craiovița Nouă – Teatrul Național – Institut – Aeroport – METRO and back, a 24.6 km round trip. First departure 05:30 on weekdays and 06:20 at weekends; last departure 20:50 either way. Between roughly 06:50 and 08:50 outbound from Craiovița Nouă, and 15:30–17:30 on the return from METRO, it also calls at Parcul Industrial. If you are staying in Craiovița Nouă — the big western housing district — this is your bus; otherwise take line 8.

Fares

Lines 8 and 9 are both listed among RAT’s urban routes, so the 4-lei urban single is the fare — the higher 5–8 lei tariffs are for RAT’s metropolitan services out to surrounding communes. Tickets come from RAT’s own kiosks, private vendors at the stops, the driver, or an automated machine. Euro conversions above use the ECB rate of 5.2530 lei to the euro at the start of September 2026.

What RAT does not publish is a journey time for either line, and I am not going to invent one. Line 8 is a straight run down one boulevard with fourteen stops; treat it as a city bus journey across a mid-sized city and leave yourself a comfortable margin, particularly in the morning peak.

Taxi and private transfer

The airport publishes no taxi information whatsoever — no rank operator, no phone number, no indicative fare. That is a genuine gap. Romanian taxis are metered and the rate per kilometre is displayed on the door by law; agree the basis before you set off, and be wary of anyone soliciting inside the terminal rather than waiting on the rank.

For a booked transfer the airport names one partner: Union Business & Travel (UBT), on +40 766 552 552 or at ubt.ro, running cars, minibuses and coaches across Craiova and the wider Oltenia region on timings matched to flights. No fares are published — ask when you book.

Car hire and parking

Five operators are listed at or serving the airport: Enterprise (Calea București 325, at the airport), WLC / World Lease Cars (at the airport), Sixt, Autonom (free delivery within the city) and Price Carz. That is a better list than the passenger numbers would suggest, and it is the right call if you plan to see Oltenia rather than only Craiova.

Parking is on the airport’s own tariff, VAT included:

Pay at the machines or at the payment point in the arrivals area (P1). Losing the ticket costs 100 lei, so keep it somewhere you will find it. The ten free minutes are a drop-off allowance, not time for a coffee.

🛋️ 4. No Lounge, and the Website Does Not Pretend Otherwise

Craiova publishes no lounge. It also publishes no shops and no restaurants: the airport’s own site runs from security rules and prohibited items straight to customs, with no page for retail or food anywhere in the menu. There is no VIP room, no fast track and no Priority Pass entry to look for. If you hold a lounge card, it buys you nothing here.

Set expectations accordingly. This is a small terminal serving mostly one airline, with a wave of departures and then quiet. Do not plan to eat a meal at the airport, and do not plan to spend three hours in it. Arrive at the airline’s cut-off, clear security, and if you have a long wait, spend it in the city — line 8 makes that possible in a way it is not at most regional airports.

What the airport does publish, and does properly, is the passenger-rights and assistance side: pages on passengers with reduced mobility, travelling with children, the security check, prohibited articles, liquid restrictions and passenger rights under EU261. Request mobility assistance through your airline at booking and at least 48 hours before departure, as everywhere in the EU.

The airport is owned by Dolj County and run as a public regie autonomă, which is why its website devotes more space to board-appointment procedures than to coffee. Expect competent basics and no frills.

🍽️ 5. Nothing at the Airport, a Great Deal in Craiova

Since the terminal offers nothing you can plan around, plan around the city instead. Craiova is cheap even by Romanian standards and Oltenian cooking is heavier and more assertive than Bucharest’s.

• Ciorbă. The sour soup that is the backbone of Romanian food — ciorbă de perișoare with meatballs, ciorbă de burtă with tripe and garlic, soured with borș or with lemon. Every restaurant does one; order it before you order anything else.
• Tochitură. Pork stewed down with sausage, served with mămăligă, sheep’s cheese and a fried egg on top. This is the Oltenian plate. Do not eat it before a flight if you want to sleep on it.
• Zacuscă and murături. Autumn preserves — a smoky aubergine and pepper spread, and jars of pickles that Romanians take seriously. Both travel; both are cheaper in the Piața Centrală, which line 8 passes, than anywhere else you will find them.
• Țuică. Plum spirit, and in Oltenia it is a household product rather than a brand. It will be offered to you. It is stronger than it looks.
• Wine from Segarcea and Drăgășani. The two serious wine names within reach of Craiova — Segarcea is a former royal estate half an hour south, Drăgășani is up the Olt valley. Romanian whites in particular, from Fetească Regală and Tămâioasă Românească, are dramatically better value than anything with a Western European label.
• Covrigi and gogoși from a street window for the price of nothing, and proper Turkish-descended coffee in the old centre.

If you are flying out early on line 8’s overnight service, note that you will find nothing open at the airport, and take something with you.

💡 6. Insider: What Oltenia Is For

Fly here when

• You live in Italy, Spain or Germany and your family is in Oltenia. That is what this airport was rebuilt for, and it does it better than a connection through Bucharest.
• You are going to Craiova, Târgu Jiu, Drobeta-Turnu Severin or the Danube gorges. Bucharest Otopeni is a long way east; Craiova puts you in the region.
• You want a cheap Romanian city break with no crowds. Craiova gets a fraction of the visitors of Brașov or Sibiu and costs less.
• You need an airport at an awkward hour. H24 operation, an hourly overnight bus, and a railway station at the other end of it.

Fly somewhere else when

• You are travelling within Romania. 833 domestic passengers in a year is not a rounding error, it is the whole domestic market here. Take the train or drive.
• You need a connection. There are none. Every flight is point-to-point on a low-cost ticket, and a missed inbound is a new ticket.
• Your dates are the Christmas or August diaspora peak. Fares on the Italian and Spanish routes go where you would expect. Compare against Bucharest, Sibiu and Timișoara before you accept one.
• You want a lounge, a meal or a shop. None of it exists here.

Worth your days

• Craiova’s Art Museum, in the Jean Mihail Palace — a genuinely grand late-19th-century house that holds early sculptures by Constantin Brâncuși, who was born in this region. The building alone justifies the ticket.
• Nicolae Romanescu Park. A vast landscaped park in the French manner on the south side of the city, with a lake, a suspension bridge and a ruined-castle folly. Locals treat it as the town’s living room.
• The old centre and the Piața Centrală. Compact, walkable, well restored, and cheap. Line 8 stops at the market.
• Târgu Jiu, an hour and a half north-west: Brâncuși’s monumental ensemble — the Endless Column, the Table of Silence and the Gate of the Kiss — laid out along a single axis through the town. If you care about 20th-century sculpture at all, this is the reason to fly to Craiova rather than anywhere else in Romania.
• The Danube at Drobeta-Turnu Severin and the Iron Gates. West and south: the river narrows into the Cazane gorges between Romania and Serbia, with the Decebalus head carved into the cliff. You need a car.
• Horezu. The UNESCO-listed Horezu monastery, the finest surviving example of the Brâncovenesc style, and the potters’ village that gives Horezu ceramics their name. Also a car job, up in the Vâlcea hills.
• The Transalpina, Romania’s highest road, climbing out of Oltenia into the Parâng mountains. Open in summer only, and worth the day.

Practical odds and ends

• Line 8 is the answer to almost every transport question here. Hourly, at HH:30, all night, 4 lei.
• Nothing at the airport is open at 03:00 even though the airport is. Bring food.
• Lei, not euros. Pay in lei on the card machine; do not carry euro cash expecting to spend it.
• Wizz’s bag rules are the ones that will cost you. Measure your bag at home, not at the gate.
• No taxi information is published by the airport. Use the meter, or book UBT.
• Charters are sold through Oltenian travel agencies, not online.
• Roaming: EU and EEA plans work in Romania with no action, at your domestic allowance. UK plans often do not — check before you land.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

📊 2026 Summary Data Table