Pardubice Airport is finishing the terminal, it will be in operation in January

Pardubice - The new airport terminal in Pardubice is almost finished. The handover of the construction will take place until December 20. The first passengers are likely to check in in January. Jiří Požár, who is overseeing the construction, said this to ČTK today. The construction consortium started the work in May last year. It won the contract with a price of 256 million crowns, but in the end, the terminal will be ten million crowns more expensive.

"These are additional works that have objectively arisen during the construction," said Hana Šmejkalová, director of East Bohemian Airport (EBA), to ČTK. "As for the construction work, I vouch for it. It's absolutely fine," Požár said.

For example, it was necessary to compact the soil more than initially expected because it concealed uncovered pits from archaeological surveys; complications were also caused by groundwater. Moreover, the construction workers faced a more challenging repair of the sewer system.

"It was very demanding for both us and the investor. For the consortium, this is the third airport; we have already built two in Slovakia. At the peak, about 300 people worked here, with an average of 60 to 70 people daily," said Petr Kafka, the proxy of the construction company Strabag. The consortium also included the construction company Chládek a Tintěra.

"We only need to finish the painting and coatings; the main task is to launch the software. We expect to be completely finished within 14 days," Kafka added.

The new terminal is expected to handle three aircraft at the same time, and up to 250,000 passengers can pass through it annually. It consists of a standard departure and arrival hall divided for passengers from Schengen and outside it, along with a baggage area and sections where there will be a restaurant and shops.

Last year, the airport served around 30,000 passengers; the record number of passengers was due to Russian clientele in 2013 when 184,000 people passed through the terminal. The number of passengers being served by the airport is rising again, with flights from Pardubice to St. Petersburg and Moscow resuming, and from September also to London, operated by the Irish low-cost airline Ryanair. It has also announced that starting in March, it will operate flights from Pardubice to Alicante, Spain.

The airport is operated by East Bohemian Airport (EBA), which is two-thirds owned by the city of Pardubice and one-third by Pardubice Region.