This is the third - and last - flight in our "Danube revisited" series. We're going to thread through four countries — Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria, with a peek at the Romanian-Serbian border — following one of Europe's great rivers for much of the way.

We're departing from Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport (LYBE), Serbia's main international hub sitting about 18 km west of the city center. It's named after the Serbian-American inventor. From Belgrade, we head northeast, leaving the flat fertile plains of Vojvodina and tracking up toward the border. Vrsac (LYVR), our first landing, is about 80 km northeast of Belgrade, sitting in the Vojvodina region of Serbia. It is home to the SMATSA Aviation Academy, which has been training airline pilots since 1972, when JAT Yugoslav Airlines, now Air Serbia, set up shop here. It has trained pilots for airlines across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Now, we turn south and pick up the Danube, following it downstream through increasingly dramatic terrain.

After crossing back over the Danube, we are in Romania — and as we track the river southwest, the flat plains give way to something altogether more impressive. We're entering the Iron Gates, the 134 km gorge system where the Danube forces its way between the Carpathian Mountains to the north and the Balkan Mountains to the south. The river narrows dramatically — at the Great Kazan gorge, it squeezes to just 150 meters wide, flanked by limestone cliffs rising 300 meters. We'll also pass the joint Romanian-Yugoslav hydroelectric dam built in the 1970s, still splitting its output equally between the two countries. After the gorge's ease, we leave the river and turn southeast toward our stop, Barza Targu-Jiu (LRPOU — sometimes listed as RO-0045). It is a small private airfield about 5 km southeast of the city of Târgu-Jiu in Gorj County, Romania. Târgu-Jiu itself, a few minutes from the airfield, is worth knowing about: it's the hometown of Constantin Brâncuși, arguably Romania's greatest sculptor and one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. In 1937, he created the "Way of the Heroes" here — an open-air ensemble running through the city center that includes the Endless Column, the Gate of the Kiss, and the Table of Silence. The whole ensemble was recently inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

A short hop back west and north to the Danube brings us to Drobeta airfield (LRBI, also referred to as RO-0023). The city is one of those places where ancient history is literally sticking out of the riverbed. Drobeta-Turnu Severin sits just east of where the Iron Gates gorge ends, and it was here that Emperor Trajan built the first bridge ever thrown across the lower Danube, completed in 105 AD. The bridge was over 1,100 meters long — for more than a thousand years, it held the record as the longest arch bridge ever built.

Back on the Danube heading southwest, we cross into Bulgaria. Vidin Smurdan (LB40, also LBVD) is a small airfield 4 km from the city of Vidin, in Bulgaria's northwestern corner. It's a port city on the Danube with a long history — Celtic, Roman, and then medieval Bulgarian. For the final leg of the day, heading southeast into Bulgaria's interior, we leave the Danube behind. Gabrovnitsa (LB15) is near the town of Montana in northwestern Bulgaria, a former Bulgarian Air Force base, home to fighter squadrons flying MiG-21s and later MiG-23s. Its job was to defend the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant on the Danube from air attack. It closed in June 2002 and was partially demolished, though the runway infrastructure remains.

The flight is 320 miles long with 4 landings. We want to cruise at about 200 knots. I will be in the A2A Aerostar. Please fly what you like.

The flight plans are here. The GTN flight plan ends at LBSF as the destination airfield is not in the GTN database.

Recommended scenery:

Belgrade – LYBE  

Vrsac – LYVR

There is a payware version of Belgrade available from Fly2, via ORBX.

We try real weather. Please set your simulator for a 6 pm departure.

Multiplayer Particulars:

Date and time: Sunday, June 21, 2026. 16:00 UTC

Microsoft Flight Simulator Multiplayer: United States East server

These flights are events posted at DigitalThemePark. For these Sunday flights, we use DTP’s Discord Server for communication.

If you want to help others enjoy the multiplayer experience, don't forget to enter your aircraft details on the multiplayer spreadsheet (linked here). Your courtesy will save others a lot of time and effort. Thanks!

Sorry, there was a wrong LNM flight plan in the package. The pln files are correct.

Here is the correct LNM plan.