.jpg){kind=link}
The story
The airline was established in 2002 as a successor to the insolvent Balkan Bulgarian Airlines and commenced operations on 4 December that year. By order of the Minister of Transport and Communications, it was declared the national flag carrier in November 2002. Bulgaria Air began operations using the name Balkan Air Tour. The airline was known by that name for just a short period of time. The name Bulgaria Air and the initial logo were determined in a public competition. Bulgaria Air was privatised in 2006. Although it was rumoured that the government wanted to sell the carrier to a major foreign investor, a group of locally owned companies (led by Hemus Air) emerged as the buyer, with Italian airline Air One being the only other contender. Hemus Air reportedly paid €6.6 million and promised to invest a further €86 million over the next five years. Since then, all flights and operations of Hemus Air and its subsidiary Viaggio Air are under the name and management of the merged company, Bulgaria Air.
In November 2008, Bulgaria Air became a full member of the International Air Transport Association (IATA). In mid 2011, Bulgaria Air announced that they had completed a thorough analysis of its routes and had decided to acquire the new Embraer E190 aircraft. The delivery of the first new Embraer E190 aircraft occurred in March 2012. In February 2020, the airline's CEO Yanko Georgiev stated that the carrier was in talks with two aircraft manufacturers to place an order for a single-aisle jet. They plan to order 5-6 of these aircraft to modernise their fleet and to extend their network with more aircraft available.
From Wikipedia’s article on Bulgaria Air, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4