Bad luck-ridden flight

A charter flight from Katowice, Poland to Rhodes, Greece was delayed due to a series of mishaps. The plane scheduled to leave at 4am on Saturday was halted, because pilots decided to order a tire exchange. After a successful take-off a flight attendant passed out, so the plane had to be diverted to land back at the Katowice Airport. In the meantime the work time of the crew expired, so 154 passengers had to wait for an another take-off with another crew until the afternoon.

Plans for new terminal in the Katowice Airport abolished

The expansion of the Katowice Airport, which is worth zł.500 million, does not include the new terminal, which was supposed to be ready before Euro 2012 soccer championship. Currently the Katowice Airport has two passenger terminals.

According to Katowice edition of Gazeta Wyborcza, the third terminal was originally planned for 2013, but the airport authorities have seriously considered delivering it before the soccer event. Recently, however, Górnośląskie Towarzystwo Lotnicze (GTL), which manages the airport, decided that it would postpone the construction of the new terminal, because of a lower growth in passenger traffic. GTL announced that as for now, the construction of the new terminal is planned to start in 2015.

The remainder of the expansion plans was unchanged. GTL wants to construct the additional tarmac for parking planes. Currently 15 Airbus A320 or Boeing 737 are able to park in Katowice. After additional parking space will be completed in two years, the number will rise to 31.

By the end of the year a contract for the project of second runway should be signed. GTL hopes to deliver it by the end of 2014. At that time the old runway will be closed for renovation and later changed into a taxi-way.

Half of the zł.500 million needed for the plan will come from the GTL and from the shareholders of the airport, who include Silesia Voivodship, “Polish Airports” State Enterprise and Węglokoks. The rest will be funded by the EU.

2 emergency landings in Poland

Easter Monday was an unusual day for Polish ATC. They had to deal with two emergancy landings in one day.

First a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Kiev, Ukraine had to land in Katowice, when one of the drunk passengers claimed to be a terrorist. After emergency landing the citizen of Russia was detained by Polish border protection officers. During the flight man loudly demanded alcohol and finally shouted that he is a terrorist three times. He declined to give permission to check level of alcohol in his blood. His luggage contained nothing that could be an evidence that he was indeed a terrorist. However, the procedures demanded that the crew landed at the closest airport. The Airbus A320 carrying over one hundred people continued its flight to Kiev.

Two hours later there was another Lufthansa emergency landing, this time in Warsaw. It was allegedly another drunk passanger, whose uncontrolled behaviour led the crew to land. The plane was flying from Bangkok en route to Duesseldorf. There were no signs of the passenger carrying a gun or posing a threat to anyone in the cabin. He is a citizen of Germany, and was accompanied by his wife and a child. After he was detained by Polish border security, his wife decided that she would continue the flight to Germany.

New terminal in Katowice

80 million zlotys (which is about 28.5 million dollars) was the cost of a new terminal at Katowice Int'l Airport. Now the whole area of the terminal is 3 times bigger and the airport can serve twice as many passangers as before.
The 2-story construction (with a big glass tarrace) works lasted 18 months. It will be oficially opened at the end of July, but it was put into operation now to ease the big passanger flow in the summer season.
According to statistic data, Katowice airport will serve 2 million passangers this year in comparison to 1,5 million last year. Till the end of June 2007 as many as 802,4 thousand people used the airport as their departure or destination point - it is about three times as many as the same period in last year.
Katowice is one of the most dynamic developing regional airports in Poland and it has the biggest increase in passangers served.
The first aiplane arriving at the new terminal was WizzAir flight from Milan-Bergamo. All of the passengers received gifts, and the first two that claimed their luggage (a man from UK and a man from Italy) got the tickets for any flight departing from Katowice compliments of WizzAir.
You can see more pictures of the new terminal in Katowice at
www.gtl.com.pl