“Okay, this is getting tense.” The possible opening date of the CPK has been announced

During the European Economic Congress, Maciej Lasek provided information about the planned date of commissioning the airport in Baranów. This is to take place in 2032. At the same time, he assured that the CPK project would be built.

– Today we are not talking about whether to build the Central Communication Port, but how to build it – emphasized the government's plenipotentiary for CPK, Maciej Lasek.

He added that the project had to be re-examined. – We thought for a long time how to approach this project, there were a lot of emotions – he pointed out.

As Lasek emphasized, it was necessary to “make the schedule more realistic.”

– If we ask the employees of the CPK company (…), the employees who worked on this project, to what extent they assessed the feasibility of completing this airport in 2028 (…), they estimated it below 1%. If we ask a consulting company (…) it's 5-10 percent. This is already a warning signal – explained the Deputy Minister of Funds and Regional Policy.

The 2028 deadline is also not realistic according to the current government. During Tuesday's panel, Lasek said that from the information he had obtained so far, among others: from the company itself shows that the airport could be commissioned in 2032 – probably in the second half of the year. – Okay, this is getting tight, this is a realistic schedule – he said.

Lasek also raised the topic of modernization of Chopin Airport. – Chopin Airport's capacity is running out next year, so the question arises what we leave LOT airlines with.

The solution is the expansion of Warsaw Chopin Airport. Representatives of Polish Airports have recently announced the reconstruction of the terminal and parking aprons at the capital's airport. The investment, estimated at PLN 2.4 billion, is expected to enable the Warsaw airport to serve 30 million passengers annually by mid-2029.

The government's representative for the CPK added that “there is no point in building a hub airport if the main carrier does not cover 60% of the slots, i.e. it does not have a sufficient number of planes to be able to perform these operations. – Otherwise (…) we will allow competition. If we let competition in, we have built an airport for competition, he explained.

The debate on the construction of the Polish air hub was also attended by former CPK representative Mikołaj Wild, who admitted that building infrastructure around the new airport was a “challenge”, while emphasizing that “this is not the essence of the problem”. – The essence of the problem is whether we manage the risks or whether we kneel to the risks and simply extend the schedule – he said.

According to Wild, the closure of Chopin Airport may be postponed until 'we have a repeat of Canada', where one of the airports failed to take over the traffic of the other.

– Then all opponents of the new infrastructure will be able to say: “We said that this CPK would not be built.” Of course, it will not take off if it is not based 1:1 on passengers from Chopin Airport – said Wild.

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The Central Communication Port is a planned transfer hub between Warsaw and Łódź, which is to integrate air, rail and road transport. As part of this project, an airport is to be built 37 km west of Warsaw, on approximately 3 thousand hectares.

The CPK will also include railway investments: a junction at the airport and connections throughout the country, which will enable travel between Warsaw and the largest Polish cities in no longer than 2.5 hours. CPK is 100 percent owned by the State Treasury.