Unique to Europe especially in the current financial crisis sweeping the Euro zone, Poland is about to gain two new airports. While many other European countries contend with the tension between local communities which are hostile to any sort of airport development and governments that are trying to accommodate forecasted levels of air traffic, Poland has delivered in adding real capacity to their air service network.
On July the 15th Warsaw’s Modlin opened for scheduled airline services after years of planning and construction work. The former military airfield, which is located approximately 40km (25 miles) northwest of the Polish capital, will be mainly used by low-cost carriers Wizz Air has based four aircraft at Modlin operating to 19 destinations and Ryanair will operate routes to 8 of its bases in Europe.
The airport has a 2,500m (8,200ft) and a newly built 12,000m² (129,000ft²) terminal which can accommodate around 5,000 passengers a day. It is forecasted that the first year of traffic throughput will total over 1.7 m passengers! In its first month of operation WMI had 161, 119 passengers and 1,106 ATMs. One can now travel to 21 cities in Europe from Modlin. The traffic forecast for the airport, prepared by ASM, envisages 5 million passengers by 2021
Of course, Poland is different to many other European countries, not least in terms of what has been happening with air travel. While Poland had been putting in place measures to open the economy for some time, it was EU accession in May 2004 which was the catalyst for a huge increase is air travel to and from Poland. Freedom of movement for goods, labour, capital and services all had implications for scheduled and charter air services.
By 2010 the number of passengers passing through Polish airports was 20.6 million, up from 10 million just five years earlier. And this was despite Poland also suffering its share of economic doldrums in 2009.
EU accession gave the Polish economy a vital stimulus which has remained in place to this day. As the graph below shows, growth in real GDP in Poland has been a consistent three percentage points above the average for the 27 EU countries. With air traffic demand widely accepted as linked to economic growth, it has hardly been surprising that Poland has seen traffic growth well above European averages.
Real GDP
Source: Eurostat
Such growth is expected to continue, with the Polish CAA predicting the number of passengers passing through Polish airports will continue growing at an average rate of 6.4% per annum for the next 10 years, and at 4.4% per annum thereafter until 2030. By then the Polish market is expected to have reached around 75 million passengers.
A Dynamic Market
With such rapid growth has come a dramatic change in the structure of aviation in Poland. Some of the established players have struggled to keep pace with the new market dynamics, while new entrants have eagerly sought out the opportunities. The most striking difference compared to 2004 is the shift towards a market comfortable with low cost carriers (LCCs). The LCC’s carried just 33% of all scheduled traffic in 2005 but now they carry 56%; Ryanair and Wizz, together, handle almost 49% of all traffic in Poland and now both carriers rival LOT in size. Meanwhile LOT, by way of contrast, has seen its market share fall to 23%. And where LCC’s have stimulated air travel through lower fares and new destinations, and seen their scheduled traffic grow by 194% since 2005, LOT’s traffic volumes have only increased by 25%.
Evolution of Traffic by Airport
Source: AirportIS
The New Airports
It is against this backdrop of rising demand for air travel, public acceptance of regional airports and a constrained Warsaw Airport that the environment has been right for new airport development. Modlin airport has now been opened and later in this year a new Airport in Lublin will be opened. Lublin is a Greenfield airport development
Lublin
The new Lublin Airport will serve a different catchment, but many aspects of its approach will be similar to Modlin. The airport will serve a city of 350,000 to 400,000 which includes 100,000-strong student population, and more than 2 million people live within an hours’ drive of the airport In stark contrast to Modlin, Lublin has no near competitors and the chance to be able to use a regional airport will be a significant benefit for many residents. Its proximity to the Ukrainian border also means that the catchment area can be extended across the border into Ukraine.
As with other Polish airport markets, new services are expected to develop around the migration ‘boom’ markets, as these form a strong and unseasonal platform for traffic development. With close links to its neighbours, Ukraine and Belarus, Lublin is also likely to see air services develop to the east, offering an alternative to current journey’s taken by road. The airport will also satisfy the aspiring outbound travel market and seasonal air services to sun destinations to the south are likely emerge. Lublin already hosts half a million tourists each year, of which 35% are from Israel and a clear niche opportunity will be the development of services to cater for inbound educational tours from Israel. Route development at Lublin will also target one or more European hub airports to ensure optimum connectivity to the rest of the world from Lublin.
Lublin Airport http://www.portlotniczy.lublin.pl/
Modlin Airport http://www.modlinairport.pl/
Source: Airport Strategy & Marketing
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