Lublin was an apt host for this year’s Connect Route Development Forum given the continued strong growth in evidence across Poland’s different market segments and regions, reports Graham Dunn
Midway through February’s Connect Route Development Forum in Lublin, Wizz Air announced it was adding new routes this July from the Polish airports of Katowice and Radom to Comiso and Burgas respectively. It underlined the momentum across the market in Poland – arguably the fastest-growing aviation market in Europe this year.
Weekly data from air navigation agency Eurocontrol shows flight activity in Poland running 8% higher than the same time last year – the fastest growth rate among Europe’s 10 busiest aviation markets.
Continued expansion comes as airports across the country reported strong growth in 2025. The country’s biggest gateway, Warsaw Chopin Airport, increased passenger numbers 13% to a new high of over 24 million, while Gdansk Lech Walesa boosted passengers 10% to almost 7.4 million.
LCC presence
Much of the growth is coming from low-cost carriers, as Ryanair and Wizz Air in particular expand services in the country.
“Poland is one of the most important, if not the single most important, development country for Wizz Air today,” said Wizz Air Network Officer Andras Szabo, speaking during Connect. “It is a huge market and we see a lot of demand for our products and services.”
Wizz has put the emphasis back on its core Central and Eastern Europe markets under a refocusing of its growth strategy and Poland is a central part of that. In December the carrier launched a two-aircraft base at Warsaw Modlin Airport, opening 11 new routes. The gateway is one of six Wizz bases in Poland alongside Gdansk, Katowice, Krakow, Warsaw Chopin and Wroclaw.
“Everywhere across the map… we are bringing new services and routes. And what we are seeing is there is a good demand for Wizz Air,” said Szabo.
Notably, though, he flagged the changed drivers of Polish demand. “This has evolved over the last five years. There is greater affluence and demand for leisure-like travel and city breaks, but also other purposes like business and even remote work.
“So we are launching services that are starkly different than 10 years ago, when Wizz Air was serving large loads of visiting friends and relatives [traffic],” he said. “The recent network is really diverse and multifaceted and I expect this to continue.”
Ryanair, too, is expanding in Poland. For example, last year it agreed to double the aircraft based at its Warsaw Modlin base to eight, to support plans to more than treble its annual passenger numbers at the airport to over 5 million by 2030.
Speaking during the Irish carrier’s recent Q3 earnings, Ryanair Chief Commercial Director Jason McGuiness highlighted Poland as one of the markets where it is directing capacity growth this year.
“We are putting eight additional aircraft into Poland. Why? [Because] the airports there are negotiating lower costs and the market is absorbing capacity in Central and Eastern Europe incredibly well,” he said.
LOT of expansion
But it is not just low-cost carriers that are growing in Poland.
Flag carrier LOT Polish Airlines increased passenger numbers over 9% last year, adding nine new routes – predominantly from Krakow.
That growth is set to accelerate this year, as it plans 15 new routes and is undertaking a major fleet expansion. The carrier is in the process of adding 55 new aircraft over the coming years, including delivery of its latest batch of Boeing 737 Max 8s and two more Boeing 787s this year.
Notably the arrival of more Dreamliners enables LOT to add new long-haul routes from Warsaw Chopin, a key focus as it works to mitigate various capacity constraints at the city’s main gateway.
“It is very difficult to add new operations [at Chopin],” said LOT Deputy Director Network Planning, Wojciech Worona. “This is why we try to optimise the current schedule. Our strategy is to do more long-haul flights to develop new markets.”
LOT will begin flights to San Francisco in May and to Bangkok in November, while new services to Almaty, Malaga and Porto will all be longer three-hour flight sectors.
The constraints at Warsaw Chopin will in part be alleviated as moves are underway to increase the gateway’s capacity to around 30 million passengers by 2029, ahead of the planned opening of a new hub airport for the capital at the end of 2032.
LOT will also next year begin taking delivery of 40 newly ordered Airbus A220s, which will replace its existing smaller Embraer jets.
“This will require some changes of our network, but not our network strategy,” said Worona. “The best new feature is we will be ready to start some niche routes for longer sectors, four to five hours, that we couldn’t serve with Embraer jets.”
Enter expansion
Meanwhile, expanding Polish charter carrier Enter Air has looked to the regions for growth.
Chief Commercial Officer Andrzej Kobielski said: “We are very strong at Warsaw but there are not many slots available. But we grow in the region.
“Two years ago we placed our first aircraft in Gdansk. This winter we have another [there]. It is growing with us despite the presence of LCCs and successively we will add additional capacity around other airports,” he said.
Enter Air is focused on leisure routes, and while it operates some of them as scheduled services, it steers clear of routes served by the LCCs. “There is no point to fight against them,” said Kobielski. “We have got our niche, we are strong, we have our customers and the product.”
Enter Air now has 11 Boeing 737 Max 8s, though two are currently grounded owing to the shortage of engine spare parts. The carrier will take delivery of two more of the type this year with more to follow next year.
“Thanks to the range, we could develop our winter network to destinations we could not get to with -800s out of Poland,” Kobielski said.
Lublin chance
Lublin hosting the Connect event is a significant step in the region’s development ambition, something it hopes will be further boosted in 2029 when it will be a European Capital of Culture city.
Lublin Airport passenger numbers increased 11% to 471,000 in 2025 and the airport hopes for growth of around 10% again this year, helped by the opening of two new Wizz Air routes – a year-round service to the Dutch city of Maastricht and summer flights to Rijeka in Croatia – as well as a Ryanair seasonal route to Trapani in Italy.
Lublin Airport President Dariusz Krzowski said that while it is looking to further develop LCC and charter carrier operations, the airport is also working to secure network carrier services.
Lublin Airport is located a 90-minute drive to the southeast of Warsaw and Krzowski sees plenty of travel demand opportunity in the surrounding region. “The Lublin catchment area is about 2.5 million, which is enough to make our business without any support from Warsaw,” Krzowski said.
Alongside developing inbound tourism to Lublin – the city’s multicultural roots were showcased during Connect with tours of its historic old town – the airport benefits from its location close to the Ukrainian border.
“Before the pandemic, Lublin started growing like a small hub airport for eastern Poland, western Ukraine and Belarus,” said Krzowski. He is hopeful of being able to rebuild the Ukrainian part of this business once the war in Ukraine is over.
“We have the idea that we can participate in the rebuilding of Ukraine and Lublin could be a gateway from Poland and Western Europe to the East,” he said. “Our capacity is ready to serve around 1 million passengers a year. But the terminal is a modular construction. That allows us to develop if necessary to spread our capacity, even up to 3 million passengers.”
Lublin Airport is also keen to capitalise on the opportunity cargo offers, and opened a cargo facility in late 2024 to help cater for that demand and position itself to handle future growth.
