Lublin Airport

Lublin Airport Port Lotniczy Lublin
IATA: LUZ ICAO: EPLB
Summary
Airport type	Public
Serves	Lublin, Poland
Location	Świdnik
Opened	December 17, 2012 (2012-12-17)
Focus city for	Wizz Air
Elevation AMSL	193 m / 633 ft
Coordinates	51°14′25.00″N 022°42′49.00″E / 51.2402778°N 22.7136111°E / 51.2402778; 22.7136111Coordinates: 51°14′25.00″N 022°42′49.00″E / 51.2402778°N 22.7136111°E / 51.2402778; 22.7136111
Website	airport.lublin.pl
Map
LUZ Location of the airport in Poland
Runways
Direction Length Surface m ft 06/24 1,200 3,937 Grass 07/25 2,520 8,267 Asphalt
Statistics (2016)
Passengers 377,606 Aircraft Movements 4,234
Sources: GCM, STV

Lublin Airport (Port Lotniczy Lublin) (IATA: LUZ, ICAO: EPLB) is an airport in Poland serving Lublin and the surrounding region. The site is located about 10 km (6.2 miles) east of central Lublin, adjacent to the town of Świdnik. The airport has a 2520 × (45 + 2 × 7.5) m runway, and the terminal facilities are capable of handling 4 Boeing 737-800 class aircraft simultaneously. Construction began in the fall of 2010 and the official opening took place on December 17, 2012. The new airport replaced the grass airstrip (1200 × 50 m) which served the PZL-Świdnik helicopter factory and was known as Świdnik Airport with the ICAO identifier EPSW.

The construction of the Świdnik airfield began in 1935 and it was officially opened on June 4, 1939. It was to serve as a training centre with a pilot school, and was built by the Airborne and Antigas Defence League, a mass organisation propagating aviation among the general public. During World War II, it was used by the Luftwaffe after Poland was occupied in September 1939, and then by the Soviet Air Force once Lublin was captured by the Red Army in July, 1944. The Germans destroyed the airfield's buildings before withdrawing.

The airport opened for passenger traffic on 30 November 1945. A domestic service was opened with flight number 1/2 that flew the route Warsaw – Łódź – Kraków – Rzeszów – Lublin – Warsaw. There is little literature on the early domestic services from Lublin airport. The route was later discontinued and Lublin lost all domestic services. In 1949, the Polish government made a decision to build an aviation factory in Świdnik, located next to the airfield. It assembled its first helicopters in 1956, with full-scale production beginning in 1957.

The factory employed some staff from the pre-war Lubelska Wytwórnia Samolotów, an airplane manufacturer in Lublin that functioned from 1936 to 1939, being itself the successor of Plage i Laśkiewicz factory which functioned between 1920 and 1935. That factory had its own airfield within the Lublin city limits, but it was closed and built over after the war. One of the streets running through the area where the airfield used to be is named Lotnicza (Aviation Street).