The short version
Craiova builds military aircraft. It has done since 1972, at Ghercești just north of the city, next to what is now Craiova International Airport.
This surprises almost everybody, including Romanians. The city is known for locomotives and cars; the third works is the quiet one, and it is the one that designed and flew its own jet aircraft.
The confusion to clear up first
IAR is not Avioane Craiova.
- IAR is a company near Brașov, at Ghimbav, with a history going back to a plant founded in 1925. Today it mostly maintains and upgrades helicopters, alongside the Airbus Helicopters Romania joint venture on the same site.
- Avioane Craiova is at Ghercești, Dolj, founded in 1972.
The aircraft called IAR-93 and IAR-99 carry the IAR prefix but were built in Craiova. That prefix is a national designation, not a company address — and it is why half the internet places Craiova's aircraft in Brașov.
Places in this piece
The IAR-93 Vultur
In May 1971 Romania and Yugoslavia signed the JUROM agreement: jointly develop a light subsonic ground-attack and reconnaissance aircraft for both air forces. Yugoslavia built it as the Soko J-22 Orao; Romania built it as the IAR-93 Vultur.
The prototype first flew on 31 October 1974, from Bacău. Series production ran at Craiova from the mid-1970s.
| Aircraft | First flight | Status |
|---|---|---|
| IAR-93 Vultur | 31 October 1974 (Bacău) | withdrawn 1998 |
| IAR-99 Șoim | 21 December 1985 | still in production |
| Yak-3U replicas | from 1992 | built for a French customer |
The IAR-99 Șoim, which is the lasting one
Developed through the 1980s with INCAS, the national aerospace research institute, the IAR-99 Șoim is a jet trainer and light attack aircraft. First flight: 21 December 1985 — three days before the regime that ordered it had its last ordinary Christmas.
It is still in production. That makes Craiova one of a small number of European cities that currently builds a jet aircraft of its own design, which is a sentence worth reading twice given everything else on this page is written in the past tense.
Where to stay nearby
Live prices and availability on a map centred on this exact spot — hotels, apartments and hostels, so you can judge the walk from here rather than guess from an address.
Bookings made through this map earn us a commission. Your price is unaffected.
Why a jet trainer outlived a strike aircraft
The IAR-93 was built to a 1971 brief for a war nobody fought, by two countries that no longer exist in the form that commissioned it. When Yugoslavia came apart and Romania's defence budget collapsed, an ageing subsonic attack aircraft had no constituency left.
A trainer is a different proposition. Every air force needs to teach pilots to fly jets, the requirement does not go away when a doctrine changes, and a competent, cheap aircraft with decades of airframe life has customers long after its generation of fighters has gone. That is the whole reason the Șoim is present tense and the Vultur is past tense.
The oddest line in the order book
From 1992 the works built replica Yak-3U fighters for a French customer. A Second World War Soviet fighter design, hand-built in Oltenia, for the Western collector market — a perfectly logical thing for a defence plant to do in the year its domestic orders collapsed, and still a very strange sentence.
Why it matters to the city
- The airport. Craiova International is right there, and the industrial case for it long predates the passenger one. It is a large part of why getting here works at all.
- The university. The University of Craiova supplied the engineers. The three works and the university are one system, not four institutions.
- The ring of housing. Like Electroputere before it, the plant is part of why the neighbourhoods north of the centre exist at the scale they do.
What you can actually see
Nothing at Ghercești. But the city's aviation and industrial story surfaces in a few places open to the public:
- The museums — the Oltenia Museum complex covers the regional industrial story.
- The Belle Époque centre — the city that existed before any of this, and still the reason most people come.
- Craiova's maximum, 1983 — the moment all three works were running at once.
Further reading on this site
The history of Craiova, then the communist city for the layer this belongs to. If you came here as a visitor rather than a reader, what to see in Craiova is the page you actually want.
*Dates and programme details here are drawn from aerospace and encyclopaedic sources; reviewed as a source set in October 2026. Production totals are given as a range because the sources genuinely conflict.*
