Katowice Airport

If you want to see holiday jets in series in Poland, sooner or later you end up in Pyrzowice. Katowice Airport sits on a plateau north of the Upper Silesian conurbation, has only a single runway – and on it, in May 2004, the very first flight of Wizz Air took off. Today low-cost jets, package-holiday charters in Polish colors and a growing number of freighters mingle here. For spotters, KTW is no glamorous hub, but an honest, easy-to-survey airport with a character of its own.

From air base to holiday airport

The story of Pyrzowice begins militarily. In the early 1940s the German Luftwaffe built an airfield here, which was first called Tarnowitz and later Udetfeld. After the war Soviet troops took over the site, and in 1948 it passed to the Polish Air Force. For decades a fighter regiment with MiG-19s and later MiG-21s was stationed at Pyrzowice – military use only ended for good in 1999.

Civil passenger aircraft arrived from the mid-1960s. With a new runway the field could also take airliners from 1964, and on October 6, 1966 LOT began regular flights to Warsaw. The real boom only came after the political changes of 1989, though: in 1991 the operating company GTL was founded, and in 1994 Katowice became an international airport. The big leap came with Poland’s EU accession in 2004 – and with it the low-cost era.

The airport is now named after Wojciech Korfanty, one of the defining politicians of Upper Silesia from the era of regained Polish independence. In everyday speech most people simply say “Pyrzowice” or “Katowice Airport.”

The cradle of Wizz Air

For many spotters, Katowice is above all one thing: the place where Wizz Air got its start. On May 19, 2004, a few days after Poland’s EU accession, the airline’s first flight to London Luton took off here. Katowice was thus the company’s first base, with Budapest added as the second in the same year. That small start has grown into one of Europe’s biggest low-cost airlines – and Pyrzowice is still one of its Polish bases today.

You can see this connection not only on the apron. Several maintenance hangars stand on the grounds, where jets of Wizz Air, among others, are serviced. For you that means: besides the aircraft in scheduled service, you occasionally also see aircraft that come in for maintenance and are otherwise based at entirely different bases. Typical is the Airbus A321neo, the backbone of today’s Wizz Air fleet, alongside older members of the A320 family. How to tell the variants apart with confidence is shown in the article Telling the A318, A319, A320 and A321 apart.

Wizz Air flies a wide network from Katowice across Europe and beyond. Which destinations are served changes with every schedule – in November 2025, for example, the airport announced new Wizz Air routes to Rimini and Rijeka.

Poland’s charter hub

What sets Katowice apart from many other regional airports is the high share of package-holiday traffic. Reference works list KTW as the airport from which most charter flights in Poland depart. The reason lies in the catchment area: the Upper Silesian conurbation with Katowice, Gliwice, Sosnowiec and many other cities is among the most densely populated regions in Central Europe, and tour operators like to bundle their holiday flights here.

Accordingly, the list of base airlines from the charter segment is long:

Add Ryanair with numerous destinations, mainly in southern and western Europe. In Katowice you thus see two worlds of the Boeing 737-800 and its successors side by side: the classic Next Generation and the 737 MAX 8 or the Ryanair variant 737-8-200. How to recognize the generations is explained in the article Telling the Boeing 737 Original, Classic, NG and MAX apart.

What distinguishes charter from scheduled traffic in detail and why it matters for planning a spotting day is covered in the article Charter flights and scheduled flights. The business model of Wizz Air and Ryanair is explained in the article How low-cost carriers work.

One runway, three terminals

The layout is quickly explained. Katowice has a single runway, the 08/26. It is 3,200 meters long and 45 meters wide and entered service on May 28, 2015. The old, 2,800-meter strip lies about 195 meters beside it; the first takeoff from the new runway was – fittingly for the airport’s history – a Wizz Air flight to London Luton. According to reference works it is the second-longest in Poland after the main runway in Warsaw.

Until October 2022 the runway was still called 09/27. It was renamed because the magnetic variation has shifted – the numbers give the rounded magnetic heading. How this logic works is explained in the article on runway designations. Keep this in mind when reading older spotter reports: they often still talk about 09 and 27.

Together the three passenger terminals have a capacity of about eight million passengers a year – with 7.3 million in 2025, space is slowly getting tight. Since October 2019 a 46-meter tower has overseen the traffic, one of the tallest control towers in the region.

Runway direction in use: 26 or 08?

Because there is only one runway, planning is simpler than at airports with several. The runway lies roughly in an east-west direction. Aircraft take off and land into the wind: with a westerly wind traffic runs toward 26, so landings come from the east. With an easterly wind direction 08 applies, and approaches come from the west. For approach shots you therefore need to stand at the end of the runway the aircraft are currently flying toward.

Whether 08 or 26 is active at the moment, you can see live in a flight tracker. How to read the data is covered in the article on flight tracking with ADS-B; the basics on wind and runway direction are in the article Understanding runway direction in use at an airport.

Cargo: integrators and jumbos from China

In air cargo, Katowice is among the front runners in Poland – reference works place the airport second in cargo volume behind Warsaw. In 2025 about 46,400 tonnes came together, a quarter more than the year before. In the first half of 2026 the airport reported just over 28,300 tonnes, the best half-year in its history and a plus of 29 percent. For 2026 GTL is aiming for 50,000 tonnes, and for 100,000 tonnes by the end of the decade.

At the cargo terminal, the three big integrators DHL Express, UPS and FedEx have their own bases. Their flights mostly run with smaller feeder freighters that bring shipments to the big hubs – for example to Leipzig/Halle Airport, the European hub of DHL Aviation. Add Lufthansa Cargo, which operates a nationwide collection point in Katowice for its truck feeder service.

It gets really exciting with the charter freighters from China. According to the airport, Central Airlines flies a Boeing 777 to Chengdu and Suparna Airlines a Boeing 747-400 from Nanjing; each of these flights carries about 100 tonnes of cargo. For spotters that means: with a bit of luck, a Boeing 777F or a Boeing 747-400F stands on the apron at Pyrzowice – at an airport that otherwise sees almost exclusively narrowbody jets. How to tell freighter versions from passenger jets is explained in the article Recognizing freighter aircraft.

Spotting in Pyrzowice

There is no permanently built visitor platform like Munich’s visitors’ hill in Katowice. The airport does, however, dedicate a section of its website to spotters and points out that two spotter clubs and many individual aviation fans are closely tied to KTW. That is a good sign: spotting is expressly welcome here, and the local clubs are the best source for current locations.

The location plays into your hands. The airport sits on open, rural land, not squeezed between apartment blocks as in Warsaw. With only one runway, traffic is concentrated and you do not have to choose between several strips. For frame-filling takeoffs and landings you still need a decent telephoto – which gear is worthwhile is shown in the gear checklist.

SP- registrations and Polish fleets

One appeal of Katowice lies in the registrations. Polish aircraft carry the country prefix SP-, and with Enter Air, Buzz, Smartwings Poland and LOT, several companies with Polish-registered fleets are on site. Wizz Air and Ryanair bring registrations from other countries on top. If you collect registrations, you quickly end up with a long list – how the prefix system works is explained in the article on country codes, and the basics of reading a registration are under Understanding aircraft registrations.

A note for perspective: widebodies in passenger service are rare in Katowice. Charter flights occasionally bring larger types, but there is hardly any regular long-haul. If you want to see Dreamliners and widebody jets, Warsaw is a better fit.

Expansion through 2032

The airport is growing faster than the terminals can keep up. GTL has therefore launched an investment program for the years 2024 to 2032. The listed projects include a new central passenger terminal, a second cargo terminal, a transshipment hub for goods and fuel with a rail connection, a de-icing area at runway 08, an extension of the apron to the west and a fourth maintenance hangar. Between 2007 and 2022 the airport had already completed more than 40 projects, including the new runway.

The rail connection is also developing. Since December 2023, Koleje Śląskie regional trains have been stopping at the Pyrzowice Lotnisko halt again, and since March 2025 a pilot pair of trains also runs between Częstochowa and Gliwice via the airport. That is not yet a fast, direct connection to the center of Katowice – so plan your trip carefully.

Katowice compared

In Poland, Katowice is one of the big regional airports alongside Kraków-Balice Airport, Gdańsk Airport and Wrocław Airport. Kraków is not far away and has more scheduled traffic with network carriers, while Katowice has more charter and cargo. The country’s hub is Warsaw Chopin Airport with the LOT fleet.

If you are planning a tour through southern Poland, Pyrzowice combines well with Kraków. The Polish Aviation Museum on the former Rakowice-Czyżyny airfield is worth a visit there – details on visiting are in the spot guide to the Muzeum Lotnictwa Polskiego. Across the border, Prague Airport with its official spotter platform is also a sensible addition. Ideas for a longer trip are collected in the article Spotting road trip through Europe.

Conclusion

Katowice Airport is a workhorse: one runway, three functional terminals and a traffic picture shaped by Wizz Air, Ryanair and the Polish charter airlines. The history as the birthplace of Wizz Air, the high charter share and the strongly growing cargo still make it a worthwhile destination – especially for spotters who collect low-cost fleets and SP- registrations.

What makes the difference between a mediocre and a good day at Pyrzowice is runway direction in use, light and a look at the departures board. And if a jumbo freighter from China then comes in, the trip has paid off twice over.