Early years On 16 September 1937,
Tsar Boris III signed a
decree which declared land within the Village of Vrazhdebna be allocated for the construction of an airport. Construction then began on the site, which was from the city centre. Two years later in 1939, Sofia Airport opened its first passenger waiting room, and after another two years was followed by a fully constructed airfield with a fully paved runway. From June through September 1938, Yugoslav airline
Aeroput connected Sofia with Belgrade thrice weekly using
Lockheed Model 10 Electra planes. During the
Second World War, the facilities were used by the military. Mail, perishable freight and passenger operations began in 1947 from buildings on the north side of the airport. The passenger terminal (now Terminal 1) on the south side was completed during the Second World War in the manner of a then-modern European railway terminus to designs by the architect Ivan Marangozov. It opened after several years of delay in 1947. The structure comprised a government wing to the west, an international handling area in the middle, and a domestic handling area to the east. At that time, it was planned that the airport would eventually have two intersecting runways at a 30-degree angle to each other. The terminal had substantially reached its capacity of some 600,000 passengers a year by the later 1960s and was subjected to a number of refurbishments and extensions beginning in the spring of 1968. In 1975, a new international arrivals handling extension was opened to the west of the building, the domestic area to the east was enlarged, the government handling area was removed to a dedicated terminal some distance to the west, a
VIP handling area opened in the old terminal, apron area was extended to the east and new taxiways opened. A
bonded warehouse opened to the east of the terminal square in 1969 and several new hangars followed to the east of the first maintenance base in the 1970s. A new checked
baggage handling system opened to the north of the building in the early 1980s, cosmetic and traffic reorganising refurbishments were carried out in 1990, with a substantial landside extension following in 2000. By the late 1970s, the terminal was handling in the region of three million passengers a year, a million of them on domestic routes. Passenger numbers fell off sharply after the 1979 CMEA ("Comecon") oil price shock and recovered to just over a million a year by the late 1980s. In the early and mid-1990s, domestic traffic practically ceased, while foreign traffic reduced significantly. The latter began growing apace in the late 1990s and early 2000s to reach its current levels. The terminal was last refurbished partially in 1990. In 2000, it underwent a wholesale update in which the international arrivals area was moved to the east wing where domestic handling had been, the former international arrivals area to the west was closed, and the layout of the central international departures area was changed in line with world developments. Despite the work to the old terminal, the airport was becoming overwhelmed with passenger traffic. The following December,
Balkan Bulgarian Airlines commenced direct service to New York City aboard Boeing 767s. Project design, involving a new terminal to the east of the old facility, a new runway to the north of (and parallel to) the existing runway, and taxiways, was completed by the mid-1990s. A finance package involving very significant European and Kuwaiti investment was initially agreed in 1998 and was in place by 2000. Work began in 2001. The new runway and some taxiways were completed in mid-2006. Terminal 2 was formally inaugurated on 27 December 2006. The station is adjacent to Terminal 2. Connection with terminal 1 is by free shuttle bus. The airport is occasionally criticised as a source of environmental noise and pollution and strict noise abatement procedures have been enforced for departing traffic since the mid-1970s, while arriving traffic is generally routed to approach the field from the east, clear of
Sofia. Expected to bring in 1.2 billion lev (600 million euro) to the state over 35 years, the tender has reportedly attracted interest from the operators of airports in
Munich,
Frankfurt,
Zurich,
Lyon,
Dublin and
London-Heathrow and as well as other operators. As of 22 July 2020, the concessionaire of Sofia Airport is the Sof Connect consortium, consisting of the French investment fund Meridiam (99% stake) and Austria's Strabag (1% stake). The concession period runs for 35 years. The airport's operator for the first 12 years of the concession period will be Munich Airport International. On 20 April 2021, SOF Connect AD officially became the concessionaire of the airport. As of 17 February 2025 the airport was officially named after the Apostle of Freedom and Bulgarian National hero
Vasil Levski with a decree of the President of the Republic of Bulgaria Rumen Radev.
Reconstruction As a result of growing air traffic and passenger numbers, the airport facilities struggled to cope despite several expansions in the years prior. Planning began in the 1990s for a new terminal to be constructed at the airport. The new runway was offset from the old by with the eastern end crossing the Iskar River bed on a specially constructed bridge. New taxiways were also constructed, allowing for 22 aircraft movements per hour. The old runway was then to be used as a taxiway only. The new runway and taxiways were opened in mid-2006, and Terminal 2 formally opened in late 2006. while the second was won by a consortium of Kuwaiti company Mohamed Abdulmohsin al-Kharafi & Sons and UAE-based Admak General Contracting Company. The initial completion deadline for the new terminal was 15 December 2004 to a total budget of 112.2 million euro. Immediately after work started, Strabag contested the geological surveys by Dutch consultants NACO B.V. and demanded additional funding for unexpected additional works. The delay was ten months, and construction resumed after the Bulgarian government agreed to augment the project's value by 4.8 million euro and extend the deadline to 31 August 2005. In 2004 Strabag demanded an additional 6 million euro due to rising steel prices. The Ministry of Transportation rejected the claim, backed by a report from NACO. In May 2005, the contractor threatened to take the case to international arbitration. In August 2005, it became clear that Strabag would not be able to meet the changed deadline, slippage being put at six to eight weeks. In November 2005, Strabag asked for eight months' further extension. ==Infrastructure==