back to top
    Home Blog Page 1482

    2018 was a record-breaking year for Polish aviation

    By
    redakcja
    -
    2018 was a record-breaking year for Polish aviation

    Polish airports served 45,7 million passengers in 2018, a 14% of increase compared to 2017 and an all-time high.
    The national flag carrier, LOT Polish Airlines carried almost two million passengers more than in 2017, with an impressive 8,7 million passengers served in 2018. According to aviation market experts, 2019 is expected to be another record year for LOT both in terms of cargo and passenger traffic.

    Warsaw’s Chopin Airport is the countries busiest airport with 17,7 million passengers served in 2018. The Katowice-Pyrzowice Airport comes in on second place with 950 000, passengers, an year on year increase of 24%, followed by neighbouring Kraków Balice airport which saw a 16% increase to 930 000 passengers. 

    Poznań-Ławica saw the largest increase, as 633 000 passengers means a 34% increase compared to 2017. 

    The title of the biggest carrier operating in Poland belongs to Ryanair with 11,6 million passengers but LOT Polish Airlines has managed to shrink the gap to just about 1 million passengers thanks to a 24% growth of passengers in 2018. Third place belongs to the Hungarian air carries Wizz Air with 8,7 mln passengers.   

    According to the Civil Aviation Authority’s president Piotr Samson, air traffic grows faster than expected: “The main driving force behind such a dynamic growth in air traffic is that Poland is catching up with Western European countries. Despite the fact that Poles are still flying less frequently than a statistical European, the Polish aviation market is seeing better results year by year.However, the faster than expected growth could lead to capacity problems and bottlenecks in the future. 

    The growing number of passengers adds a sense of urgency to the government’s plan of building the so-called Central Communication Port. Located strategically between Warsaw and Łódźin central Poland, the megaproject scheduled to be operational by 2027 will be a combination of a large capacity airport, high-speed rail hub located by the intersection of two of Poland’s busiest highways (A1 and A2).  The central location combined with the massive infrastructure projects will guarantee a high level of accessibility for passengers as well as cargo. According to some experts, the new airport will allow Poland to compete with other mega transport hubs such as Istanbul in Turkey and Dubai in the UAE. The Central Communication Port is an opportunity for LOT Polish Airlines capture additional market shares and become a global player on the long-haul as well the connecting flight market.

    The CEO of LOT Polish Airlines, Rafał Milczarski, stated at a recent IATA press conference that “Passengers from Central and Eastern Europe will continue to fly more. Not only in Europe, but globally. And global travel can happen via hubs. I am delighted to see that the Polish Government has approved the construction of a new aviation hub in Warsaw”

    He went on to add: “For the past 3 years, LOT has been the fastest growing airline in Europe, increasing by 30% a year. In 2015, we carried 4.3 million passengers, in 2018 we reached 8.9 million passengers. And we won’t stop here as we aim to reach 10 million passengers in 2019!”

    LOT Polish Airlines has been growing quickly in recent years but it seems as it’s only in the starting phase of expansion as the Central Communication Port will offer the company opportunities never seen before. 

     

    Finance Ministry: Poland’s economy to grow by 4% in 2019

    By
    redakcja
    -
    Finance Ministry: Poland’s economy to grow by 4% in 2019
    Shutterstock

    Poland’s finance ministry announced on Tuesday that it expects the economy to grow by 4 per cent this year which is faster than 3.8 per cent growth assumed for the 2019 budget, approved by parliament earlier this year.

    The ministry forecast slower GDP growth for the following years: 3.7 per cent in 2020, 3.4 per cent in 2021 and 3.3 per cent in 2022. Private consumption and a strong labour market would remain the key drivers of growth.

     

    In its latest World Economic Outlook report, publish earlier this month, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast that the Polish economy would grow by 3.8 per cent this year which, according to the IMF, would be the highest in the region.  The World bank has said that it expects growth to slow to 4 per cent this year from 5 per cent in 2018.

     

    This is borne out by data from the Polish Central Statistical Office (GUS) which announced on Wednesday that averages salaries in Poland rose 5.7 in March compared with March 2018. The average gross monthly salary in March was PLN 5,164.53 (USD 1,368) according to GUS.

     

    Employment in firms with more than nine employees, in respect of which the records are kept, increased by 3 per cent in March compared with the same month a year earlier.

     

    Despite the increase, the cost of a worker in Poland is approximately a third of the EU average according to Eurostat. The average EU hourly labour costs were estimated at EUR 27.40 in 2018 compared with EUR10.10 for Poland. The labour costs calculated by Eurostat include wages, and other expenditure such as training fees and social insurance contributions. They exclude the agriculture and public administration sectors.

    A roadmap to Paschal Triduum

    By
    redakcja
    -
    A roadmap to Paschal Triduum
    Wikipedia

    We have written about a few ways to live through Lent and prepare oneself for Easter. Finally, the time has come to experience the most important Christian holiday itself.

    The Easter Triduum starts on Maundy Thursday. It is a day remembering a series of key events from the Gospel: the Last Supper, which was also the first Eucharist, establishing the sacrament of priesthood by Christ, as well as washing of the feet of the Apostles, and captivating Jesus. There is a special Chrism Mass in every cathedral when the holy oils are blessed and the chrism is consecrated. Maundy (or Holy) Thursday is also a personal holiday for every priest as priesthood is especially celebrated on that day. In the evening, the Mass of the Lord’s Supper is held. After Gloria (sung first time after the Lenten period), the bells and organ are silenced until Saturday evening. The Blessed Sacrament is moved to the chapel of adoration and the liturgy remains unfinished – it will be continued on Friday.

    Good Friday is a day of fasting and prayer, as it remembers the Death of Christ. Since early morning, there is an opportunity to take part in adoration and the Way of the Cross service. It is the only day during the year when there is no Mass held in the Catholic Church. However, late in the afternoon people gather for the Lord’s Passion liturgy. One can notice that the altar is stripped of the cross, flowers, candlesticks and cloth. All this symbolism points to the idea that as Jesus dies, the world is left without light and the great gift of Eucharist. Vigil by the Grave continues into the night.

    Holy Saturday is when even the most lukewarm Catholics wake up, pack their baskets with eggs, sausage, bread, lamb, salt, ham, and horseradish, which constitute “święconka” – food blessed by the priest on Saturday, to be eaten on Sunday morning. Blessing of święconka is the most attended service in the Polish Church. Even people who never go to church visit the place at least this one time in the year. As the sun sets, the culmination of the whole Triduum comes about. Easter Vigil Mass starts with the ceremony of darkness and light, the paschal candle is lit, followed by a procession into the church. Vigil Mass can be considered the richest Mass in the Church, in terms of stimulating the senses: there is light and darkness, there is choir singing of psalms, there are readings spanning from the creation of world to the resurrection, there is incense. The Catholic imagery and symbolism are fleshed out to their fullest. After the liturgy, Christ is risen. “Alleluia” comes back to the songs and people greet each other with “Christ is risen, alleluia” to which one should respond “Indeed He is risen, alleluia”.

    Easter Sunday starts with the Resurrection Mass with procession around the church. Then comes the Easter breakfast. Much like the Christmas Eve dinner, Easter breakfast is a Polish institution in itself. The table can hardly fit all the food on it. Eating continues way into early afternoon and moves smoothly into lunch. There is a lot of ham, vegetable salad, eggs, mayonnaise, chocolate and special Easter cakes. In the afternoon, it is best to try and go for a walk, so that one does not end up in the hospital due to overeating. Later, gluttony may continue. Then comes Easter Monday, still a bank holiday in Poland, but that is a story for another article…

    Polish LOT Airlines look forward to a busy 2019 season

    By
    redakcja
    -
    Polish LOT Airlines look forward to a busy 2019 season
    LOT media

    March 31 started the 2019 summer season in general aviation. Pilots, cabin crews and ground personnel of Polish LOT Airlines are getting ready to handle a whooping 75 thousands of scheduled flights on domestic, european and transcontinental routes. Until the end of the year, lot is expected to serve as many as 10 million passengers.

    Among the new major destinations is Miami FL, USA. Regular connection to the Sunshine State’s capital will serve not only Europeans going sunbathing in Florida or looking for a Carribean holiday but also the large Polish-American community in Florida as well as a growing number of travellers heading for increasingly popular destinations in Latin America.

     

    Looking east, LOT is opening new routes to New Dehli, India and Colombo, Sri Lanka. Flights from Europe to India are very competitive, as the destination grows in popularity among Poles and Central Europeans who are travelling to South Asia more frequently for business as well as for leisure. Sri Lanka on the other hand is a typical vacation spot for people who enjoy nature and wildlife.

     

    A couple of new long-haul routes will also open. Daily flights will start from Warsaw’s Chopin Airport to Tokyo and Los Angeles, while three additional flights will be added between Toronto and Warsaw. The frequency of direct flights between Kraków and Chicago will also increase.

     

    Starting from mid-June Polish LOT Airlines will return to Beirut, Lebanon. For 12 long years, Lebanon was not listed among the Vatican’s official pilgrimage sites which features 20 locations around the world. Lebanon was put back on the list this year and there is already a notable increase of Christians travellers who want to visit and pray at holy sites in the Middle East. According to the LOT Airlines press office, 48% of tickets for flight to Lebanon are booked by tourist groups.  

     

    The core strategy of Polish LOT Airlines is to become a major hub for passengers in the Central and Eastern Europe. To achieve this, LOT is increasing the number of connections to Budapest to 6 a day.  In many cases, the Hungarian capital city serves as an alternative base for LOT’s point to point flights.

     

    No wonder the growing network of connections attracts more and more passengers to services provided by Polish LOT Airlines. In 2017 LOT carried 6,8 mln passengers. 2018 finished with a 30% increase to 8.9 million passengers. Analysts say that the company’s target of more than 10 million passengers in 2019 is realistic despite a shorter flight season than in 2018.

     

    However, Polish LOT Airlines has to tackle a problem that is becoming increasingly common for European carriers –  delays.

    Due to increased traffic over Europe, and lack of ground personnel, 26% of flights are currently delayed for more than 15 minutes. To put it into perspective, european air traffic grew has grown by 14% in the last year and more than 300 million of european passengers have experienced problems associated with bottlenecks. Polish LOT Airlines is up to the challenge and declares that it will to focus on punctuality of flights and overall passenger comfort.

    The culture war's take on Easter

    By
    redakcja
    -
    The culture war's take on Easter

    The creeping secularization of Christian holidays is often illustrated by how “Happy Holidays” replaced “Merry Christmas” on gift cards and Coca-Cola’s Santa elbowed St. Nicholaus away from the scene. Few people pay attention to what is happening to Easter.

    Unlike Christmas, Easter managed to retain its name so far, probably because there is no reference to Christ in it. But there is little more to it than that. When you try googling images of “Easter” or “Easter card”, you had better not count on seeing the Resurrected in any shape or form, unless He came back as a cute bunny pup. While the hegemonic infantilization of culture may to some extent accept baby Jesus in Its sweetness and harmlessness, it is obvious that a triumphant king that conquered death itself must be a manifestation of patriarchy and some kind of oppression.

    The corporate code of conduct for Easter allows bright flashy colourful eggs, fluffy chickens and bunnies, and nothing more. Everything must be cute, childish and, most of all, neutral, so that no one can be upset. Not counting people who get upset when their faith, or even just culture for that matter, is being turned into a five year old’s coulouring book.

    Faced with the current state of affairs, though, one has to ask which was first: a chicken or an egg (no pun here). Do search engines, stock photo websites and corporations merely reflect the condition of today’s society and its values, or is it possible that they are involved in some kind of social engineering and their ambition is rather to shape the world than reflect it. Numerous recent censorship scandals and “hate speech” policies involving Google, Facebook, and Twitter can make one opt for the latter.

    Paris: Massive Fire In Notre-Dame

    By
    redakcja
    -
    Paris: Massive Fire In Notre-Dame

    “French firefighters have won an hours-long battle to save the main structure of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, after a colossal fire caused the spire of the historic edifice to crash to the ground and wiped out centuries of heritage.” – Telegraph UK

    The 850-year-old cathedral and second most iconic image of Paris is home to many priceless works of art, architecture, statues as well as musical instruments and religious relics. 

    “Notre Dame on fire is a catastrophe for the Catholic Church as well as for European history. It is a tragic moment for all Catholics and Christians. Poland is uniting with Paris and France” – Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki wrote on his Twitter account.

    Visiting Jan Matejko's House

    By
    redakcja
    -

    The National Museum in Krakow was established by a resolution of the Krakow City Council on 7 October 1879, as the first national museum institution at a time when the Polish people were deprived of their own statehood and country, which had been appropriated by the partitioning powers.

    Until the end of World War I it was the only such large museum accessible to the public in the Polish lands, and to this day remains the institution with the largest numbers of collections, buildings and permanent exhibitions.The collection of the National Museum in Krakow was begun with Nero’s Torches, Henryk Siemiradzki’s painting presented to the city of Krakow by the artist himself on 5 October 1879 with the intention of creating a gallery of national art in the Sukiennice (Cloth Hall).

    The following day (6 October 1879), 39 artists attending the celebration of Józef Ignacy Kraszewski’s 50 years of work as an author gathered in Konrad Wentzl’s townhouse at the Main Market Square and promised donations of their works to form the initial collection of the newly formed museum. The artists’ example was soon emulated by private individuals, who began to send donations to the museum in the Sukiennice.

    Ultra-Modern Warsaw Concert Hall Plan Given Green Light

    By
    redakcja
    -
    Ultra-Modern Warsaw Concert Hall Plan Given Green Light

    Plans to build the biggest concert hall in Poland in Warsaw’s Praga district have been given the green light, with the project expecting to be completed by 2023. The plans to build the 1,850-seat concert hall will fulfil the need of the Sinfonia Varsovia – the Polish symphony orchestra that was formed in 1984 and has been without a home ever since.

     

    The new Sinfonia Varsovia Centrum will become the orchestra’s new home and will be found on the eastern bank of Warsaw.

     

    Designed by Atelier Thomas Pucher of Austria, the concern hall will be super modern, with an interior designed specifically to create optimal acoustic conditions. The designer intends to create the acoustics of a classic concert hall in a ring-shaped stadium.

     

    The project is being supported by the city as part of the Integrated Programme for the Revival of the Capital City of Warsaw, and will no doubt be a welcome addition to the city’s landscape for culture seekers and music lovers.

     

    But, will lovers of traditional architecture be pleased with an ultra-modern stadium being built alongside five other historical buildings from the former Veterinary Institute?

     

    Let’s see!

    JACK BUCKBY REPORT – Poles commemorate the 25 000 officers killed by the Soviets in Katyń

    By
    redakcja
    -
    JACK BUCKBY REPORT - Poles commemorate the 25 000 officers killed by the Soviets in Katyń

    The 1940 Katyń Massacre was for decades “forbidden knowledge” in Poland. Everybody knew that the Russian communists had killed around 25 000 Polish POWs in one of the largest massacres and war crimes of the Second World War. As long as Poland was ruled from Moscow, it was impossible to blame anyone else than the German Nazis for the massacre.

    People across Poland commemorate the 25 000 military officers, policemen and members of the intelligentsia who were killed by the Soviet authorities in a series of mass executions in April and May 1940. The Soviets claimed for more than 50 years that it had been the Germans who had killed the Poles, taken prisoners of war in 1939 by the Red Army, after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. Poles remember the atrocities committed against the Polish nation by the totalitarian and genocidal communist ideology. On April 7th 2019, the 12th annual “Katyn March of Shadows” took place in Warsaw with hundreds of people participating in a historical reenactment commemorating the victims

    EU Claims Poland Broke Law Over Supreme Court Reform

    By
    redakcja
    -
    EU Claims Poland Broke Law Over Supreme Court Reform

    The advisor to the European Union’s top court announced this week that Poland failed to uphold the independence of the Supreme Court, and broke EU law. A final judgement is still pending, but Advocate General Evgeni Tanchev announced in a statement:

    “The court should rule that the provisions of Polish legislation relating to the lowering of the retirement age for supreme court judges are contrary to EU law”.

     

    Tanchev also said that the measures taken by the Law and Justice government impair “the objective independence” of the court and “expose the Supreme Court and its judges to external intervention”. The suggestion is that politicians could have inappropriate interference with the country’s judicial system, but Tanchev and PiS critics fail to realise why these reforms were required in the first place.

     

    By lowering the age of retirement for Supreme Court judges, the Polish government has done something important. First of all, judges from a bygone time are being thanked and dismissed so that a new wave of judges can take their place and help establish Poland’s place on the modern world stage. Poland must keep up with the times and build a judicial system that isn’t plagued by ideological biases of the past. Secondly, Poland is ensuring that Supreme Court judges are in fit mental shape.

     

    What, pray tell, is wrong with ensuring judges retire at what used to be a fairly standing retirement age? What, I ask, is wrong with having young judges?

     

    If the European Union continues to push Poland around, then it won’t be all that long before public opinion in Poland starts changing. Mark my words. The European Union is widely considered to be a safety net to the Polish people – even as a British Brexiteer I recognise that – but I don’t think that feeling will last forever. The more the EU follows a path of globalism and open borders, and attempts to pull Poland into line, the Polish people will reassert their independence from this union.

     

    If the EU wants Poland to leave the union, attempting to interfere in national affairs like the judiciary is one way to do it.

    1...1,4811,4821,483...1,506Page 1,482 of 1,506

    2024© PolandDaily24.com