M. R. Stefanik Airport
The Milan Rastislav Štefánik Airport (in Slovak Letisko Milana Rastislava Štefánika), also called - especially in English - the Bratislava Airport (Letisko Bratislava), in Bratislava is the main international airport of Slovakia. It is named after General Milan Rastislav Štefánik whose aircraft crashed above Bratislava in 1919. The airport is run by the Letisko Milana Rastislava Štefánika – Airport Bratislava, a.s. (BTS), a public limited company. Till May 2004, the airport was run by the state-run entity Slovenská správa letísk (Slovak Airport Administration).
Location
It is located 9 km to the north-east from the city center, 132 m above the sea level on an area of 477 ha. The airport is known for its extraordinarily good climatic conditions. Bratislava Airport is located within a one-hour drive of Vienna (Austria), Brno (Czech Republic) and Gyor (Hungary), covering a catchment area of four countries (Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia).
Characteristics
Is serves both scheduled and unscheduled, domestic and international flights The current runways enable the landing of virtually all types of aircraft used in the world today. The airport features 2 mutually vertical runways with concrete surface (04/22 – 2090x60m, 13/31 – 2950x45m), both of which underwent a complete reconstruction in the 1980s. The runway 13/31 is equipped for approach and landing accroding to II. cat ICAO. Airport capacity is currently around 1.8 million passengers. A new terminal facillity and control tower was added in the 1990s. The number of passangers served decreased temporarily in the early 1990's due to competition by the nearby Vienna International Airport (which is only some 55 km distant from the Bratislava Airport) and then in 1999-2000 due to changes made by the new Mikulas Dzurinda government, but it is quickly increasing since . In 2004, the airport served 894 000 passangers, which represents the highest number in its history and an increase of almost 100% compared to 2003. Further increase is expected. Primary destinations for regular flights in terms of the number of passangers in 2004 were: Prague, Paris-Orly, London-Stansted, Košice, Amsterdam-Schiphol, Moscow, and Munich. The main arlines in 2004 were: SkyEurope (48% of passengers), Slovenské aerolínie (19% of passengers), Czech Airlines (9,7%), Austrian Airlines (4.5%) and Air Slovakia (5%). SkyEurope's share in regular flights was as much as 59%.
External links
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