Prague's Ruzyne Airport takes off to become busiest in Central Europe

Prague's international Ruzyne airport has never seen better times and it has ambitious plans to continue its expansion. A new terminal is currently being built with hopes of turning Ruzyne into one of the busiest airports in Central Europe. Part of the terminal has already been opened, four months ahead of schedule, as the airport struggles with a growing volume of passengers.

New terminal of Prague's Ruzyne airport, photo: CTK

Just after the fall of Communism, annual passenger traffic at Prague's Ruzyne airport was 1.5 million; this year, that number is expected to be seven times higher. But this has come at the expense of the comfort of passengers, who spend most of their time standing in long lines at the check-in desks. Transport Minister Milan Simonovsky:

"We've opened the new terminal earlier than planned because the current terminal has gone beyond its capacity by fifty percent. Passenger numbers are going up and up. Last year we recorded 10.5 million. But the terminal can only handle 6 million and we are expecting a record 11 million passengers this year."

And once the rest of the new terminal, North 2, is completed at the end of the year, Ruzyne will have the capacity to accommodate 16 million passengers. Hana Cernochova, the Czech Airports' Authority's new General Director, says the new terminal will also follow Schengen Agreement security regulations:

Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek and Hana Cernochova, photo: CTK

"Unlike in the current terminal, passengers from incoming flights will be separated from outbound flights to increase their safety. We have also ensured that the quality of security checks does not suffer from the expansion and will be just as high as before."

Terminal North 2 will also have a crisis centre, to accommodate the relatives of passengers coming from catastrophe-stricken countries. In terms of passenger traffic, Ruzyne is currently the 30th busiest airport in Europe. It has an area of 9.2 km2 and just two runways. The Transport Ministry is looking into the possibility of building a third runway by 2007. With North 2, the Czech Airports' Authority hopes to beat its biggest rival in the region, Vienna's Schwechat airport (where passenger traffic last year rose by only half of that recorded in Prague) to become the biggest in Central Europe, east of Germany.

Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek, photo: CTK

Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek says that local people, as well as passengers, could benefit from the project:

"From a national point of view, every additional one million passengers, who pass through the airport help to create some three thousand jobs."

But a group of Czech citizens have been against the airport's ambitious plan. In a local referendum held in two Prague districts closest to Ruzyne, residents said "no' to a third runway. Jan Holub was one of them:

"There are several reasons why I oppose it but the main one is that it would be extremely harmful to the environment. We're not just talking about accommodating more passenger planes but freight planes too. That's just the same as agreeing to a large rise in the number of trucks driving through our country."