Stalemate over new airport

By Karol Chlipalski

If the decision concerning the location of the new international airport in the Warsaw area is not taken immediately, the likely stalemate could force airport authorities to limit the number of takeoffs and landings at Okęcie airport in the near future, as it would be unable to handle growing numbers of passengers, industry professionals said.

Transportation experts have determined that Warsaw will probably need a new airport by 2006 or 2007, when the number of passengers departing from and arriving at Okęcie International Airport will reach 7 million per year, a capacity it will be unable to handle due to the underdeveloped road network in the area and densely populated nearby residential areas. The airport currently handles almost 5 million passengers a year and more than 100,000 takeoffs and landings annually.

"We have known that a new airport would be needed for at least 15 years now and nothing has been done as of yet," said Andrzej Ruciński, a transportation professor at Gdańsk University. "I doubt very much if this is going to change for the next couple of months."

An interministerial team at the infrastructure ministry, which is responsible for air transportation, unanimously decided earlier this month to appoint Andrzej Piłat, an undersecretary of state at the ministry, to make the decision before the end of the year.

In the meantime, the construction of a new terminal at Okęcie airport, which is scheduled to be completed in 2005, will increase its passenger capacity to 10 million travelers a year.

"This is the volume of passenger flow that the airport will reach in 2012, according to estimates," said Edyta Mikołajczyk, an Okęcie airport spokeswoman.

But experts say that the new terminal will only delay the problem of being able to handle rapidly increasing passenger capacities for a short period of time.

The selection of the new airport's location is barely progressing due to the fact the authorities were not focused on the issue, choosing instead the construction of an additional terminal at Okęcie.

One industry insider, who asked not to be named, cited the example of Oslo, where a new airport the size of the future Okęcie II - planned to handle an additional 7 million passengers a year - was built at the beginning of the 1990s.

"The process of choosing the new location took three years (and) construction took another six years," Ruciński said, referring to the Oslo airport.

Another industry expert contacted by the Business Journal said that before making a decision about the location of the new airport, numerous hydrogeological and climatic studies, as well as reports on bird migration patterns, should be done. Some of them could take at least a year to complete since the studies have to be done during each season of the year.

"You can accelerate construction, but not the studies," the expert said. "Up to now, we do not know whether this kind of study concerning each location under consideration exists. Even if it does, it must certainly be updated."

The expert also warned about accelerating the decision-making process because a wrong decision could result in the loss of the estimated €4.6 billion (zł. 20 billion) that it will cost to build the new airport, according to the Polish Airports Authority (PPL), the country's largest airport operator. This sum will not cover the costs of railway construction and road connections.

To date, the number of passengers landing at Okęcie airport has been growing steadily from 2.15 million in 1993 to 4.94 million in 2002. Ruciński estimates that in the near future the number of passengers will grow by at least 8%-10% after the country's accession to the European Union and its implementation of the union's open-skies policy, both of which are expected to increase passenger traffic significantly. Within three to four years, about 7 million passengers will paralyze the traffic flow to and from the airport by jamming all the streets surrounding Okęcie.

Henryk Rządzki of Warsaw City Hall's road department says that infrastructure reconstruction is planned for the roads around the airport and that the plans for the new terminal include a separate rail line, but that their execution depends on the city budget, which usually is underfunded.

"We will have to convince commuters to use other means of transportation rather than going to the airport by car," he said.

Meanwhile, the new airport's potential location was the recent subject of a debate in the Sejm's infrastructure commission, in which government officials, aviation experts and PPL representatives participated. Representatives from four municipalities - Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki northwest of Warsaw, Mszczonów, Nowe Piasto nad Pilicą in the southwest and Radom in the south - also attended the debate. Each would like to be selected as the site of the new international airport as well as receive numerous related investments.

There are already military airfields in Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki, Nowe Piasto nad Pilicą and Radom, which could be converted to passenger airports. The strongest candidates for the new airport are Modlin north of Warsaw and Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą, the site of existing former military airfields. The Radom airport is thought to have the same problem as Okęcie - being to close to the town. Until now, Mszczonów has never been considered as a possible location for an airport, though experts say it's "well situated in terms of transport accessibility."

Edward Maniura, a PO member of the Sejm's infrastructure commission, said that the commission was wrong to limit itself to initially considering only the existing facilities.

"All possible locations should be taken into consideration regardless of whether the runway exists or not," he said.

Wiktor Ziemiński, director of the technical division of PPL, said that an existing runway at a military airfield would not save money if one were chosen as the site of the new commercial airport.

"The requirements for military runways and civil runways are different," he said, adding that the conditions of the military runways are unknown since they cannot be determined without a complicated review that has yet to be completed. To convert the runways, the concrete would have to be razed and replaced - a costly endeavor that would increase the price of the investment, he said.