Lufthansa Cargo to open freight facility at Katowice Airport

Lufthansa Cargo is opening a cargo facility at Katowice Airport on the back of growing demand.

The new road feeder service (RFS) consolidation facility will open on January 4 and through the use of RFS operations it will increase the number of connections offered to and from Poland with the carrier’s hubs in Frankfurt and Vienna.

“Due to the increase in our operations at Katowice Airport, we can offer our clients both more frequent connections and faster transport times. This is especially important during a crisis, when the time of freight delivery and the reliability of the entire process are of key importance,” said Wojciech Ryglewicz, Lufthansa Cargo sales and handling director in central and eastern Europe.

Shipments not only from Poland, but also from other central European stations in Lviv, Košice and Ostrava, will be consolidated at Katowice Airport before transport to Frankfurt and Vienna.

Artur Tomasik, president of the board of Górnośląskie Towarzystwo Lotnicze, the company managing Katowice Airport, said: “We have been focusing on diversifying the infrastructure at Katowice Airport for the last 15 years.

“It is why we created a new cargo zone in the southeastern part of the airport. In 2016, we opened a new cargo terminal with an area of 12,000 sq m. To the south of the terminal, a big car park with internal roads was built; to the north, an apron for cargo aircraft with an area of nearly 9 ha was constructed.

“During the coronavirus pandemic, which – without a shadow of doubt – is the biggest crisis challenge in the history of aviation, we did not waste time, and signed an agreement with Lufthansa Cargo. The act of launching a Polish RFS hub of this airline at Katowice Airport is a quantum leap in the development of freight transportation at Katowice Airport.”

In 2019, more than 20,000 tonnes of freight were transported to and from the airport. The airport will end 2020, in spite of the coronavirus pandemic, with a similar result.