Development of Regional Airports in Poland

Abstract

In Poland, for many years the access to air transport for the average citizen was very limited, both in terms of cost and distance from the airport. After the liberalization of the aviation market and the introduction of the policy of "open skies" this situation has, however, changed dramatically. The emergence of low-cost carriers definitely increased the availability of air transport in financial terms. It had also a great influence on the development of regional airports, which so far played only a subordinate role in relation to the country's central airport in Warsaw airport. The development of regional airports largely removed the territorial limitation of the availability of air transport, since it is from these ports that you can now get to many parts of Europe and the world. Therefore, we are now seeing a continuous increase in the significance of regional airports. This trend concerns not only Poland, but also many other European countries. The purpose of this article is to determine the degree of development of regional airports in Poland and an indication of their role in the country's aviation market against the background of trends in air transport in selected EU countries.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n4p625