Landing at Chișinău airport, step by step

This guide covers travel, process and cost. It contains no clinical advice.

Chișinău International, code RMO, is Moldova's only international airport and it is small — one terminal, a short walk from gate to exit, and roughly 13 km from the city centre. Passport control is usually quick. On the other side you will find taxis, a bus into town, and car hire desks. Crowd-sourced averages put a taxi at 40 lei to start plus 6 lei per kilometre, and a public transport ticket at 7 lei, which makes the ride into the city one of the cheapest airport transfers in Europe.

The first twenty minutes

Check the current entry requirements before you fly rather than relying on this list — passport validity and length-of-stay rules are the sort of thing that changes without announcement, and the official guidance is the only version worth trusting.

Getting into the city

At those rates the 13 km run into the centre is a modest sum by UK standards, which is worth knowing so you are neither overcharged nor haggling over something trivial. The bus is cheaper again and perfectly usable on the way in, when you have energy. On the way back to the airport after surgery, take the taxi.

Ask your clinic whether they arrange airport pickup before you book anything yourself. Many clinics that work with international patients include it, and a driver holding your name at 1am is worth more than the small amount it might cost you.

If you land late

Several of the direct services from London and Dublin arrive in the evening or later, which is fine but worth planning for. Book the transfer in advance, tell your accommodation what time you expect to arrive, and have the address written in Romanian on your phone — not because nobody speaks English, but because a written address removes the entire conversation at the moment you least want to have one.

If it is the night before treatment, this is the one piece of the trip worth over-preparing. You want to arrive, sleep, and turn up rested — and the difference between that and a stressful hour outside an airport is a booking you made three days earlier.