The number of flight destinations from Vilnius will go up by 20 percent in 2025 once the new departures terminal at Vilnius Airport is completed, according to Lithuania’s Transport Minister Marius Skuodis.
The terminal will be equipped with the latest generation of security equipment, and passengers will no longer have to remove liquids or computers from their luggage, which will increase throughput by around 20–30 percent, says the head of Lietuvos Oro Uostai (Lithuanian Airports, LTOU), the airport operator in Lithuania.
“If today we have about 60 regular destinations through the airports, the number goes up to 80 all the time in the summer. Next year [2025] we plan to have around 100 regular destinations. Clearly, what matters is quality, not quantity, and for us to reach major hubs, […] so we will definitely have good news, and airports have all the instruments now to ensure that,” Minister Skuodis said at an event on Monday to mark the completion of the installation of the main structures for the new terminal.
The new departures terminal is scheduled to open in 2025 after it has been connected to the airport’s existing infrastructure. The airport will then be able to serve twice as many people as now.
“The new terminal will be equipped with the latest generation of aviation security equipment specifically designed for screening passengers’ hand luggage, so this new equipment will make it much easier for passengers to prepare for the whole process as passengers will no longer have to take liquids, computers out of their suitcases,” Simonas Bartkus, CEO of LTOU told reporters on Monday.
“We will have more checkpoints and [...] that capacity, how many people we can serve every hour, will grow. [...] We expect the capacity to grow by about 20–30 percent,” Bartkus added.
The new terminal is being built by Eikos Statyba for 41.5 million euros.
New arrivals terminal in the works
There are also plans to build a new arrivals terminal, which is currently housed in a 70-year-old building that is no longer fit for the purpose, said Transport Minister Skuodis.
“We will present [the plans] to you soon, at the beginning of next year, but the fact is that the development of Vilnius Airport will not end with this construction and there will be many more constructions,” he told reporters at Vilnius Airport on Monday.
According to Bartkus, director general LTOU, the old arrivals terminal is no longer suitable. Since the building is protected, it will not be demolished, but adapted for other uses.
According to Skuodis, Lithuanian Airports will announce an architectural tender for the entire Vilnius Airport in 2024.
Bartkus told BNS in an interview last September that, given the growing passenger traffic, the arrivals terminal no longer met the airport’s needs. However, heritage conservationists would not allow its demolition, so a new terminal could be built within five years.
According to Bartkus, the old building could house shops, cafés, an aviation museum, creative and conference spaces.
Vilnius Airport was built in 1954 and entered into the Register of Cultural Property in 1984. Since extension in 1993, the original building has only been used as the arrivals terminal.
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