According to information leaked to the Hungarian media, the visiting Chinese premier during his stay in Hungary will raise the issue of the Szombathely cargo airport to Hungarian prime minister Orban.
Building a cargo airport to serve as China’s main port of entry into Europe has been on the table for some time and the location had been selected several years ago. In the vicinity of the West-Hungarian town of Szombathely, the new, single runway airport would provide excellent rail and road connections to the rest of Europe.
If the decision is indeed made, this airport will be the only completely new facility of this size being built in Europe, bringing major benefits to Hungary as well as Austria which is just a few miles West of the field earmarked for the new airport.
Check out the SIA-Port web-site here.
As I have mentioned in my tower chronicles, the idea of a cargo base has been floated several times in the past twenty years. One of the ideas was to make use of the military airfields left behind by the departing Russians. Debrecen and Sarmellek did run up as civilian airports but the idea for a cargo base remained only an idea. At first, Kiskunlachaza was being considered which on first sight appeared to be a good initiative. It is near to Budapest (and Ferihegy), inside the same TMA its realization appeared to be a relatively simple task. But nothing came of it. Nothing came of the Ferihegy cargo base either due certain land-claim problems. This would have been an excellent strategic location both from an aviation and land infrastructure point of view.
As it was, quite some time had to elapse before the issue of a cargo airport came up again. Since Budapest was definitely out, the planners had to look around in the countryside and this is how they happened on the empty field near Szombathely. The airport of Papa was there not too far away, the place where anno the USAF C-17s were based and it would have been cheap and easy to create a base there. But that was not to be. Szombathely was the preferred location.
We are now waiting expectantly to see how serious the Chinese are about their new cargo airport. I am afraid I will not live long enough to be a an old controller in the tower of Vat-Porpac (the names of the two villages near Szombathely where the airport is supposed to be built).
Picking the best site for a new airport involves a complex evaluation of a multitude of relevant factors. Among these, the aviation related considerations are important but are not necessarily overriding. Hence the fact that the existence of an old military airfield is not necessarily a deciding factor. In particular for a primarily cargo airport, road and rail connections are important and a location with the best combination of multimodal solutions (existing or potentially available) offers a lot of advantages. In case of SIA Port, a location that allows road traffic towards Western Europe to pass without having to cross half the country has many advantages. Furthermore less restrcitions due to nose and so on also make a site attractive. Modern air traffic management solutions do provide means for safe and efficient operations even in the viccinity of other busy airports. The Szombathely site offers many of these benefits and as such has a definite edge over other locations.