Polish city puts struggling airport up for sale

The city of Łódź is looking to sell off its struggling airport. It currently offers just one regular destination to passengers (which is itself currently suspended) but generates large costs for local taxpayers. The authorities hope it could become a logistics hub with the help of investment from Asia.

The airport was one of a number built or expanded in Poland, with the help of European funds, following the country’s entry to the EU. Yet, amid competition from Warsaw, Katowice and Radom – all less than two hours’ drive away – Łódź’s airport has faced growing difficulties.

“We’ve hit a wall. Practically nothing is flying from Łódź airport,” said the city’s deputy mayor, Adam Pustelnik, at a press conference. “The people of Łódź don’t deserve to foot a bill of several tens of million of zloty every year.”

Pustelnik mentioned the goal of seeking “a strategic partner from China or India”. But he did not give details or a timetable for the proposed sale, and emphasised that the city is open to all offers, reports Dziennik Łódzki.

The mayor herself, Hanna Zdanowska, declared on Twitter that “Łódź can be a window to Europe for the countries of the Far East”, and that creating a “cargo logistics hub [would] give huge impetus for the city’s development and create new jobs”.

“We are aware that such an operation has only succeeded in a few places and it will be very hard to do it,” Pustelnik admitted, citing German and Dutch examples of logistics hubs as potential examples for Łódź to follow. “The risk of failure is huge, but we simply must accept the challenge.”

Municipal leaders now need to gain the backing of local councillors for the plan to sell some of the city’s 95.5% of shares in the airport. But the head of the council’s strategy and development department, Robert Kolczyński, hinted that they would like to keep some control.

“We don’t want to get rid of all the shares. We can sell the investor a minority or a majority share package, but leaving ourselves golden shares to allow us to block key elements,” Kolczyński said, quoted by Dziennik Łódzki.

The airport’s CEO, Anna Midera, said that she supported the decision and would continue to ensure that it was in the “best condition” for the “transaction to make sense”, noting that its annual losses had decreased by 30 million zloty during her four years in charge.

“If not for the pandemic, we would be in a completely different place,” Midera told Dziennik Łódzki, noting that the airport had its best ever charter traffic before COVID-19 brought things to a standstill.

In November, however, it was reported by Radio Łódź that the airport had actually recorded smaller losses after the suspension of flights during the pandemic than it had when operating normally in 2019.

The airport currently offers only one passenger connection, to London Stansted, although this is also currently suspended. The operator of that line, Ryanair, previously also flew to another two destinations, but these are unlikely to be renewed, reports Gazeta.pl.

The airport has long been in decline. In 2008, 340,000 people used it. But by 2018, the figure had fallen to 217,000. By comparison, Kraków airport expanded from 2.92 million passengers to a record 6.77 million in the same period.

In 2013, passenger numbers at Łódź’s airport’s rebuilt terminal fell almost one million short of forecasts, noted Reuters, which cited it as an example of the “ghost airports” built in Poland with the help of EU funds.

Łódź’s airport may also face further struggles in future as the government pushes ahead with an ambitious project to create a new central “mega airport” located between Warsaw and Łódź. It is pencilled in for opening in 2027

Main image credit: HannaZdanowska/Twitter

Ben Koschalka

Ben Koschalka is a translator and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.