The location of a new airport is always a strategic decision, not only from a military and defence point of view, but also due to the large area occupied by the runway, the height restrictions of neighbouring buildings, the noise generated by the airport, and a myriad of other considerations. In the 1930s, Warsaw’s airport in the centrally-located Mokotów district was abandoned for the peripheral Okęcie. A similar fate befell Gdańsk’s airport.
Military aircraft trainings used to take place in Gdańsk’s Wrzeszcz district as early as 1910, with hangars in place for them in 1917. When the Free City of Gdańsk was demilitarised after the end of World War I, the airport was redesignated for civilian traffic. A mere 1,350 metres from the Baltic Sea, there was a runway over two kilometres long where planes carried up to 1,500 people a year during the interwar period. After World War II, the airport grew and a second runway was built. But the surrounding urban area was also growing alongside the air traffic, and that combined with a sea breeze that made navigation difficult meant landing and taking off was becoming not only inconvenient but riskier. The last passenger plane took off from Wrzeszcz on 30 September 1974.
The airport site was quickly converted into the huge Zaspa housing estate. Today, Zaspa is in the process of ‘densification’ with more buildings under construction, but you can still see traces of the wide runway in its layout – plus the main streets of the estate are named Pilotów (Pilots) and Startowa (Take-off). Just a few years ago, you could still see some preserved hangars: the smaller ones housed service points and shops, although these no longer exist, while the largest hangar was turned into a shopping centre in the 1990s. Today, it has been significantly rebuilt, but it is located in the same place, one where large passenger planes would ‘park’ in the 1970s.
