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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
In what has unofficially been declared a record, a plane was forced to circle Kraków airport 27 times on Sunday as thick fog prevented flights from landing, causing chaos for travellers.
The pilot was eventually forced to give up and return to the airport the fight had departed from, Katowice, just 70 km (43 miles) away. A journey that was meant to last just 21 minutes ended up returning to its destination after three and a half hours in the air.
Kraków does not have any regular flights from Katowice, so it is likely that the plane – belonging to budget airline Wizz Air – was being repositioned between the two airports, both of which were hit by fog on Sunday morning.
News website I.pl notes that the Airbus A321neo plane in question burns around 1900 kg of fuel per hour during flight and costs around 100,000 zloty (€23,400) to fully refuel.
saw this in the sky above Katowice yesterday. the cloud stayed for the whole day. according to radars, it was a wizzair flight from Kraków to Katowice, it circled around the airport 27 times before landing. today i found out there are no existing direct flights from KRK to KAT. pic.twitter.com/FIPBSzVoNx
— just passing through (@shrooomix) December 30, 2024
As a result of yesterday’s fog, some flights to Kraków were redirected to Rzeszów, Warsaw, Ostrava and then to Katowice itself once the fog there lifted. That left large numbers of travellers stranded in Kraków, with many waiting hours for their flights and others shuttled to Katowice by bus.
Saturday saw even more disruption, with a total of 88 flights cancelled at Kraków that day.
Aviation monitoring service Flightradar24, which declared yesterday’s 27 loops around Kraków as an unofficial record, notes that the location of Kraków’s airport makes it very exposed to fog, often resulting in disruption, especially in autumn and winter.
The city also suffers from some of Europe’s worst air pollution, caused in particular by emissions from home heating and vehicles, which is exacerbated by Kraków’s geographic location and climatic conditions.
Unofficial longest holding top list
🥇 WZZ401 – 27 laps pic.twitter.com/jAFAXFKs9S— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) December 29, 2024
Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Main image credit: Flightradar24
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.
