The new Warsaw-Radom Airport, worth PLN 800 million (EUR 174 million), opened for business on Thursday, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
At the launch ceremony, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that the project “makes profound economic sense” from the standpoint of logistics and national infrastructure.
Morawiecki added that the new airport “will relieve some of the burden” on Warsaw's Chopin Airport, which he said "is absolutely overloaded.”
The prime minister told reporters that the facility “will open up the whole Radom region to new investment and business," as well as “raising pay levels” in the area.
‘Historic day for Polish aviation sector’: president
Meanwhile, President Andrzej Duda issued a message to mark the opening of the new airport, hailing “a historic day for the people of Radom, for the whole region and … for the Polish aviation sector.”
In the message, which was read out at the ceremony by presidential aide Grażyna Ignaczak-Bandych, Duda said the Radom airport would offer “new opportunities for people living in the vast area between Warsaw, Łódź, Kielce and Lublin,” with flights to cities in Europe, Asia and Africa.
At the same time, international travellers "are being given a new, convenient means of reaching our country and its capital,” the president said.
Duda also said in his message that the launch of the Radom airport “is in line with the principle of sustainable development of our country,” under which “Poland must not be divided into a centre and its peripheries, into first-rate and second-rate locations" because "regional centres are as important as cities with millions of inhabitants,” the PAP news agency reported.
Marcin Horała, a deputy minister for regional policy, said that Warsaw-Radom would be “Poland’s most advanced airport.”
Warsaw-Radom Airport
Warsaw-Radom Airport is expected to initially handle around 1 million passengers a year, a figure that could eventually rise to over 3 million, officials said.
The first incoming passenger flight, from Paris, was due to land in Radom on Thursday evening, the PAP news agency reported.
Poland’s national airline LOT will offer regular flights from Radom to Paris and Rome, as well as Preveza, Greece; Tirana, Albania; and Varna, Bulgaria, the PAP news agency reported.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, money.pl