Limited Facilities, Nice Enough Airport (Gdansk Airport)

Member Name: MagdaDH

Product:	Gdansk Airport
Date:	28/05/09 (23 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good location for northern Poland, quiet, small,

Disadvantages: very limited shopping and catering

Gdansk Airport (officially named Lech Walesa Airport) is located in the village/suburb of Rebiechowo within about a half hour's minutes drive from most areas of Tri-City (many outlying suburbs will be closer, though).

Public transport links are good to Gdansk itself, but much worse to Gdynia or Sopot. Licences taxis are widely available and would normally cost something in the region of 60PLN plus, but this vastly varies depending on where you actually going.


The airport has served international flights (to Scandinavia and Germany) for years now, but has became much more busy in the recent years (and in particularly with an advent of cheap flights in the form of Ryanair and Wizzair)

In addition to several daily commuter-type flights to Warsaw, decent connections to Germany (including Frankfurt, Bremen, Hamburg and Munich, but strangely not Berlin) it has now connections to Rome, Alicante, Turku, and London, Birmingham, Doncaster, Liverpool and Prestwick in the UK as well as Dublin and Cork.

This increase in destinations has not really resulted in a visible increase in facilities. The terminal is new and tidy, but very small. There is one restaurant and three very limited bars/cafes, as well as a few standard shops (gift shop, very basic duty free, florist), but overall it's a minimal basic that would be required in any international terminal, especially as a lot of them don't operate at all times the terminal actually operates. There is no bookshop, nowhere to buy any clothes or similar items you might have forgotten, no chemist.

Other services are better represented, as there are all the usual car hire companies, post office, a bank and at least two cash points.

The last time I had a need for such, which was admittedly about four years ago, the airport had about the best mother & baby room I have seen: nicely decorated, with comfortable armchairs for the parents, cot, toys and changing table and even a divan for the parent to catch a bit of sleep. The last time I visited (late summer 2008) it still seemed to be there, but I did not check whether it has changed for worse or better.

The check-in always seemed reasonably efficient, although the queues can get slow early in the morning. On arrivals, the immigration control is always painfully slow. They have only two counters and if the plane is anywhere near full, there is always a queue - this is of course arriving from the UK. The arrival is likely to be much better when arriving on a Schengen flight, which doesn't involve immigration control.

All in all, a decent enough small airport struggling a bit with its increased workload. I always quite liked it as I don't like busy terminals, but don't expect usual large-airport diversions.

Summary: a decent enough small airport struggling a bit with its increased workload