New hub in Poland (?) [CPK discussion]
 

Not strictly related to the usual topics but, as our Poland-based FTers are most certainly already aware of, it seems that the Polish government will soon give the go-ahead to the construction of a new airport, which would become the main hub in the Country. The exact location is Baranów, roughly 20 miles west of Warsaw and about an hour away from the second largest Polish city, Łódź.

The plan in question is being backed by LOT as this will allow the WAW-based carrier to further expand.

Link in EN.

G

Let's hope it doesn't go the German way...

I presume you are referring to the Berlin Brandenburg airport?

Germany has no central hub airport - and there are no plans for one!!!

What is the upside to this? WArsaw will always be the most intresting, or did i miss something?

9.8 bn€.... why??

Yes, that WAW (Chopin) will (all being well) no longer operate as commercial airport.

G

Why not?

It's the number floating around for the total cost of the project - including both the airport (CPL) and the associated road and rail infrastructure (adding to CPK), which each part being about equal cost wise by estimates.

...which would be a bargain as far as new-build major airports go. Hopefully they'd adopt a modular design for easy expansion and to handle future demand growth, runways as well as terminal buildings.

Because after the investments made prior to the 2012 Euro WAW is just fine for a 10-15 million per year airport. Remember LO was about to go down if it wasn't for the cheaper oil recently. It would be extremely unwise for Poland to build such a major greenfield airport....

I hope it's not going to happen that soon as I will definitely miss the WAW traffic just above my head looking from the balcony ;)

G

Whilst LOT is obviously backing the project, the new airport is not necessarily being planned because of the home carrier; instead, it takes into consideration an ever growing traffic and most importantly the fact that room for expansion at Okęcie has virtually reached every limit (and this as much as I'd love WAW to stay, being basically my 2nd home since the mid 90s!).

G

WAW was also kneecapped with some other pre E2012 investments. Plus the growing resentment over noise generated by airplanes in the sprawling metropolis (new curfew at 22...). They are at capacity at peak times in terminal (especially NS zone) and are pretty much at capacity with daily operations.
I'm not an expert on this by any means but it seems those investments made have simply not been scalable.

It seems like a massive waste of taxpayer money. If WAW is reaching capacity at certain times of the day, then move more of the LCCs and holiday charter carriers over to Modlin.

And how exactly do you propose to move the LCCs and holiday charter carriers over?

Make it more economical for them to use Modlin over Chopin. Seems cheaper than spending over $10 billion for a completely new airport. Heck, there's plenty of space there to construct a new terminal. Even construct a rail link from the airport to the track lines that run through the Modlin rail station.