Warsaw's Chopin airport handles over 2 mln passengers in Q1

Chopin Airport serviced 2,016,000 passengers in Q1 2022, a marked improvement on the previous year, a Friday press release shows.

The results are 28-percent higher year on year but are only 54 percent of the total number of passengers in the record-breaking year of 2019, according to the airport.

The data show that international connections constitute over 83 percent of passenger air traffic at Chopin airport.

"From the beginning of January to the end of March, 88 percent of people used the scheduled traffic - this result is 4-percent lower than in the record-breaking year of 2019 and 7-percent higher than in 2021," the press release said.

According to airport spokesperson Anna Dermont, the airport's good performance in Q1 2022 was the result of reinstated flight connections and new destinations offered by airlines as well as the abandonment of restrictions related to the Covid-19 pandemic.

She said, however, that at the moment it was difficult to predict the consequences of Russia's war on Ukraine on the aviation business.

"Before its outbreak, we hoped that this year would be a strong rebound from the declines caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, as a result of the Russian aggression against Ukraine, the functioning of Polish airspace has changed, and civil traffic has significantly decreased. However, we hope that this year's results will not be worse than last year's," Dermont was quoted as saying in the press release.

Throughout Q1 2022, Chopin Airport also handled 24,510 tonnes of cargo, which was over 20 percent more than in the first quarter of last year.

Chopin Airport in Warsaw is the largest airport in Poland. In 2021, the port handled nearly 7.5 million passengers. The record year was 2019, when it handled 18.86 million passengers.