Warsaw Chopin Airport

Warsaw Chopin Airport is one of the largest and most modern airports in Central Europe. Thanks to its seventy-five years of experience and location in the centre of the country, within the catchment area of seven million passengers, in 2011 the airport provided services to 9.3 million passengers (out of which 36% were corporate clients), which accounts for 43% of the civil aviation traffic in Poland.

Despite the growing importance of regional airports in recent years, which contributed to a decrease in the market share of the Warsaw Chopin Airport, the airport traffic is constantly growing. The average traffic growth index over the last dozen years amounts to 4%. It is forecasted that in 2016 the Warsaw Chopin Airport will provide services to 10.2 million people, whereas in 2020, to around 11.9 million.

Short-distance flights to European cities constitute the core part of traffic at the Warsaw Chopin Airport. The airport carries out mainly passenger scheduled and charter flights. Other services include general aviation and cargo/post traffic (accounting together for 10% of the total traffic).

The Warsaw Chopin Airport currently operates around 100 scheduled flights to national and international airports and a constantly growing number of charter flights. The following destinations are the most popular with passengers: London, Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam. In the case of domestic flights, passengers most frequently travel to Wrocław, Gdańsk and Cracow. The majority of traffic (94%) is performed within Europe.

LOT Polish Airlines is the main carrier in terms of the number of operations and passengers. The company takes part in more than a half of all operations performed at the Warsaw Chopin Airport, which is treated by LOT as its base. PPL actively supports the efforts of PLL LOT to create a hub at the Warsaw Chopin Airport, which would increase the amount of transfer passengers. Regardless of the above, PPL anticipates that the network of connections will be further developed on the basis of European connections.

The Warsaw Chopin Airport has a modern and welcoming commercial zone of a total area of more than seven thousand square metres, visited by twenty-five thousand passengers on average on a daily basis.

Location and Access
The area of the Chopin Airport City is located in Warsaw (Mazovian province), in the Włochy district, directly next to the Chopin Airport, near Terminal A. This location has easy access to the city centre, from the northern side through the extension of the Żwirki i Wigury Street, and from the eastern side thorough the newly created expressway NS and then through motorway A2 Warsaw – Berlin. The distance between the airport and the inner city centre is merely 7.5 km, which means that the city centre can be reached in 15 to 20 minutes.

Convenient bus connections (six lines) offer good transport possibilities to almost any district of the city. In addition, the airport is connected to the railway network thanks to the railway station opened in the middle of 2012, which provides an easy access to the main railway stations in Warsaw, as well as in a wider perspective to the districts of Warsaw located at the right hand-side of the Vistula river, peripheral districts and other towns and cities throughout Poland.

It must be emphasised that the Chopin Airport City is located in the capital of Poland, a dynamically growing metropolitan city with nearly two million inhabitants, ranked by CB Richard Ellis as the fifth most attractive location for investments in developing countries. 150 among 280 largest international corporations have their branch offices in the capital of Poland. In this context, Warsaw is ranked as the twelfth city in the world, right after New York and Paris.

In addition, as the planned office park will be located in the direct neighbourhood of a large international airport, it would be difficult to find a more attractive location for this kind of project.

Chopin Airport City – conception
Chopin Airport City is a project consisting in the construction of an office park, supplemented with facilities providing auxiliary services as well as commercial and conference services. In accordance with the project conception, seventeen buildings will be constructed, having two to eight storeys.

The services and office complex, together with the city square, complete the commercial offer of the Warsaw Chopin Airport, in line with the tendency to locate similar investments in the vicinity of airports. Car access to the buildings located within the area of this complex was provided from the existing parking, whereas pedestrian access is possible from the side of Courtyard by Marriott hotel, with entrance on the level of the first floor of the designed complex and from the side of the park at ground level. It is projected that food-court services facing the freely available green areas will be located at the ground floor of office buildings, to attract lessees from the Chopin Airport City area, as well as potential guests of the nearby hotels from the Marriott chain.

The designed office buildings constitute A-class facilities, with the possibility of locating auxiliary services on the ground floor. Each office building has its own two-storey car park. In addition, over ground car parking spaces were designed outside buildings. For design purposes, one parking space was allocated to fifty square metres of the leased area.

The urban layout of the Chopin Airport City was designed as a closed system with an optimised pedestrian traffic system between the respective office buildings, so that there is no need to cross busy access roads. Internal road traffic was minimised. The element joining the whole office zoning system is the designed internal park with arranged green areas and water holes. This solution improves the working conditions of leased office space users, and is also available to hotel guests and the users of the Warsaw Chopin Airport.

Seventeen buildings were designed in total (including a conference, office and services complex comprising four connected buildings). With the aim of optimising the efficiency of the facilities, twelve mid-height buildings were designed, up to sixth floor, which may not be higher than twenty-five metres (including one two-storey conference and services building and three adjacent office buildings). This solution permits to design the buildings in an efficient manner, without the need to make any additional outlays, or to implement emergency exit solutions for the purposes of fire protection. In order to increase the total area of offices for the whole project, five buildings were designed as high buildings, up to eight storeys (twenty-nine metres). The height of these buildings does not exceed forty-five metres, i.e. the admissible height resulting from safety requirements applicable to aviation operations at the Warsaw Chopin Airport.