A rebuilt airport has opened in the city of Radom on the site of a previous airport that went bankrupt due to a lack of passengers just three years after beginning operations.
“We have lifted the curse from this city,” said Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki at the official opening ceremony yesterday ahead of the first scheduled flight, from Paris, which landed in the evening.
Most tracked flight right now – first passenger flight to "new" "Warsaw" Radom Airport https://t.co/gLl2owzzg4 pic.twitter.com/ywJK6sR7f7
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) April 27, 2023
Warsaw Radom Airport – as the facility, around 100 kilometres south of the capital, is now named – has a new terminal built from scratch, after the previous one was demolished, as well as a rebuilt runway.
The previous incarnation of Radom Airport declared bankruptcy in 2018, having only begun operations in 2015. In 2017, the airport only served 9,903 passengers.
After the bankruptcy, the airport – which had been owned by the local authorities in Radom – was bought by state-owned operator PPL, which owns Warsaw Chopin, Poland’s largest airport, as well as stakes 14 other airports around the country.
Dziś otworzyliśmy najnowsze polskie lotnisko – Port Lotniczy Warszawa-Radom im.Bohaterów Radomskiego Czerwca 1976! 🇵🇱🛫 ✈️🛬
Ten port ma ogromny sens gospodarczy i infrastrukturalny. Cieszę się, że nosi takie imię, bo oddaje hołd bohaterom, którzy walczyli m. in. o to, byśmy… pic.twitter.com/0uqO30rOmO
— Mateusz Morawiecki (@MorawieckiM) April 27, 2023
PPL oversaw the 800 million zloty (€174 million) reconstruction of the airport in Radom, which was completed in December last year, with an operating licence then issued in March.
It currently offers regular flights to five destinations – Paris, Rome, Tirana, Preveza and Varna – as well as charter flights to Antalya. All routes are operated by LOT, Poland’s national airline. The first departures from the airport – to Paris and Rome – will take off today.
The airport is expected to handle around 200,000 passengers this year, reports TVN24. Its terminal currently has a capacity of up to 1 million passengers a year, with PPL saying that could eventually rise to over 3 million.
Destinations currently served by Warsaw Radom Airport (source: LWR)
“This airport makes great economic sense,” said Morawiecki at yesterday’s opening. “Warsaw [Chopin] is absolutely overloaded, so opening this airport makes great infrastructural and logistical sense.”
The prime minister also argued that the new facility will help “open the whole region” around Radom to further development, drawing in further investment.
As well as serving passengers in its own right, Warsaw Radom Airport is also designated as a backup facility for the government’s flagship project to build a new “mega-airport” between Warsaw and Łódź. Once that opens – currently scheduled for 2027 – Warsaw Chopin will close to civilian passengers.
The company implementing the government's plans to construct a new "mega-airport" and transport hub has signed an agreement for design work totalling 7bn zloty (€1.5bn).
It is currently the largest such agreement of its type in Europe, claims the firm https://t.co/k8iNROUBic
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) July 28, 2022
Main image credit: KPRP (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
