Brno Airport

Letiště Brno-Tuřany is the Brno-Turany Airport and it is located within the city limits.  It was built in the 1950s and in the 1980s it was used by the Czechoslovak Air Force.  In 1989, the airport returned to civil use and today it is owned by the South-Moravian region.

The airport code is BRQ and it is the country's second busiest.  This is also where we saw the Pope back in 2009.  2011 was its busiest year with 557,952 passengers.

My new landlord was the architect for the new departure hall and it won "Building of the Year" in 2007.

It is really convenient to fly in and out of Brno.  If only there were more destinations.  Ryanair has flights to London Stansted and Wizz Air has flights to London Luton and Eindhoven.  A few years ago Ryanair flew to Alicante (Spain) and Wizz Air used to fly to Rome.  I loved the Rome flight but I guess there wasn't enough demand for these flights.

SmartWings does have seasonal charter flights to Antalya, Burgas, Corfu, Heraklion, Hurghada, Kos, Lamezia Terme, Marsa Alam, Ostrava, Palma de Mallorca, Preveza, Rhodes, Tenerife-South, Tirana, Varna, Zakynthos.

This year BMI Regional is now offering daily flights to Munich.  Well at least six days a week.

Hopefully this is the start of more direct flights so that I don't always have to fly out of Vienna or Prague.  With so many international students here I'm sure there's got to be enough demand for flights to Spain or Italy.  My vote is for a direct flight to Dublin.

Update:  Wizz Air cancelled the Brno-Eindhoven route.  The last flight is October 2017.

Update:  Ryanair will start flying from Brno to Berlin Schönefeld in Spring 2019.  The first problem is that it's Ryanair and Ryanair sucks.  The second problem is that the flights aren't convenient as they only run on Tuesday and Saturday afternoons.  Update: December 2019, the Berlin route will be cancelled by April 2020.

Update:  In February 2019, the British carrier FlyBI collapsed and the route between Brno and Munich has been cancelled.  The reason for the collapse was given as a spike in fuel and carbon costs and uncertainty about Brexit.

Update 2021:  In April, SkyUp is supposed to start flying between Brno and Kyiv.