March the 21st, 2025 – The massive Zadar Airport renovation has finally begun, which will eventually total over 15 million euros.
The Zadar Airport has been delayed for some time, and as we previously wrote, will be carried out over four phases, actually beginning with the third as opposed to the first.
As Sinisa Malus/Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the third phase is set to begin shortly, which includes the expansion of the departure and arrival zones, as well as the exit to the existing passenger terminal, reports Ex-Yu Aviation News.
the zadar airport renovation won’t interfere with current functions
The works on the Zadar Airport renovation, worth 15.3 million euros, will be carried out over the next fourteen months. Despite everything involved, the works aren’t expected to have an impact on traffic or the functioning of the airport as a whole. In the next stages of the project, a new terminal will be constructed, which will be connected to the existing one into a single functional unit. The new terminal will boast nine exits, a baggage sorting facility, two baggage carousels and a capacity for 1,480 people.
a new railway line
The airport also plans to build a railway line which leads directly to the Port of Gaženica with a railway terminal in the underground parking lot. There’s also a plan to overhaul and extend the runway by 700 metres, seeing it reach a length of 3,200 metres. The works on the runway will increase the airport’s overall carrying capacity and enable it to accommodate wide-body aircraft. The work on expanding the departures area will provide over 2,000 square metres of new passenger departures space.
The main study for the development of Zadar Airport was prepared by the following companies: Aking, Markiva projekt and Zagreb Airport, and the first-prize design task was the work of architects Ante Kuzmanić and Ivan Jurić from the Ante Kuzmanić Architectural Bureau from Split.
Zadar Airport has actually reached the maximum traffic that it can handle with its current capacity, which is another good reason for these extensive works.
In 2025, the airport expects additional traffic growth of 3 to 5%, which is appropriate given the work on the terminal building. On the last day of September last year, the airport exceeded the figure of 1.5 million passengers, reaching this milestone for the first time in its history. Cargo traffic is also expected to grow in the coming years.
This requires various industrial plants or certain distribution centres headquartered in the wider Zadar area. Zadar Airport believes that the development of economic zones will also stimulate this type of air traffic at the airport, and there are already concrete indications of this.
traffic growth
Zadar Airport had seen 1,514 passengers pass through by February this year, representative of a 16% increase when compared to the same month last year, when there were 1,304 passengers recorded.
The figures could not have been better than the aforementioned result, but they are slightly lower than those from January this year. In Zadar, traffic recovery is expected to occur at the end of March, when the summer flight schedule will come into effect. By then, the airport will be connected to a number of international destinations, with the majority of traffic generated by the wildly popular low-cost Ryanair.
