Gdansk Airport in 2020

Gdansk Airport started the year 2020 in great mood. We broke another record as we had handled almost 5.4 million passengers throughout the entire 2019. We had almost 90 destinations in the network and hoped for new ones.

Anticipating what might happen in January 2020 we wrote at airport.gdansk.pl: “New challenges are ahead of the Gdansk Airport. More and more new aviation destinations. We are building a pier and Airport City Gdansk. On May 27th, we will serve thousands of fans of the UEFA Europa League Final, and in June we will invite 5 000 runners to Skywayrun 2020.” 

From the perspective of the end of 2020, we know that the air connections market has collapsed. From March to June, passenger planes practically did not fly. After the summer recovery, autumn turned out to be difficult again. This is due to restrictions on the freedom of flying related to the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Eurostat data shows that airports were the most affected by the pandemic, with the biggest drops in major European airports: Frankfurt, Paris and Amsterdam. 

“2020 was the worst year for the aviation industry in many decades. Although aviation received a lot of public aid from the European Union and individual governments, it was insufficient. The pandemic has shown how unprepared we were for such threats as the coronavirus pandemic. Especially at the beginning, it caused organizational, medical, political and economic chaos. Spring lockdown was a mistake. The entire world economy has suffered from the pandemic. All ports and airlines in Poland and around the world are in trouble. Nobody has gone through this crisis unscathed” - says Tomasz Kloskowski, the President of Lech Walesa Gdansk Airport.

Due to the pandemic, on May 27th, the Europa League Final in football did not take place in Gdansk, and we did not organize a run on the runway of the Gdansk Airport Skywayrun 2020 in June. We hope that our annual running event will be organized on June 19th 2021 and that we will be able to conduct the Europa League Final on May 26th, and the Gdansk Airport will be able to serve thousands of fans who will come to the match.

Against and despite the pandemic, our two important investments have successfully been implemented at Gdansk Airport: the expansion of the passengers terminal and the construction of the Alpha office building as the part of Airport City Gdansk. Works on the terminal are carried out by the DORACO Construction Corporation. They began in the fall of the last year and are expected to end in the fourth quarter of 2021. The contractor for the office building HOCHTIEF Polska is expected to hand over the finished building to Gdansk Airport in the second quarter of 2021. 

“As for the Gdansk Airport, the situation is stable enough so that there is no risk of bankruptcy or loss of financial liquidity. We did not lay off employees, we did not lower their salaries. We are a port with a good and healthy foundations, we have creditworthiness and greater financial liquidity than smaller airports. Despite the pandemic, we are running two large investment processes. If restrictions on entry and exit to individual countries disappear, the market will recover quickly, within 2-3 years” - added Tomasz Klosowski.