Communication airports in Poland after 1918

The history of communication airports coincides with the century-long existence of the reborn Polish State, because it was only after 1918 that the first airports adapted to passenger traffic were established in the country. Two periods of their development deserve particular attention: the interwar period, in which the communication aviation was born, and the time after 2004, when its rapid expansion was noted. The establishment and development of the communication aviation of the Second Polish Republic was strongly associated with the statist policy aimed at modernizing the state. This is evidenced by the construction of airports in Warsaw, Gdynia, Katowice, Łódź and Vilnius, whose activities have helped to integrate the country after the years of partitions. In People’s Poland, civilian communication was based on a network of military airports, which was supplemented with a new airport in Gdańsk-Rębiechów. Large areas of the north-eastern voivodeships were excluded from air connections and timid attempts to overcome these disproportions only appeared in the Third Republic of Poland in the form of airports in Lublin and Radom. The fourfold increase in the number of passengers served by Polish airports in 2004–2016 was an unquestionable phenomenon influenced by the Open Sky policy.