An unusual show awaits visitors to Václav Havel Airport Terminal 1 when it’s raining or snowing more heavily. The twenty-year-old building is in poor condition and its roof is leaky. The airport must therefore use buckets to catch running water in such situations.
According to the Chairman of the Board of Czech Aeroholding, to which the airport belongs, the roof should have been repaired much earlier. “We are trying to change it and buckets are here for the last time this year. Most of the leaky points are already in good condition and the last ones will be repaired by the end of the summer,” said Václav Řehoř to iDNES.cz.
The hall roof was leaking the most last summer – they had 50 buckets ready. Since then some roofs have been repaired and now fewer buckets are required. Only the places where reconstruction has not taken place are leaky, i.e. especially over Area A, where reconstruction is to take place in September this year.
But they were short of monetary resources for repairs in the past: when it was under the previous management, Prague Airport invested money earned in the rescue of Czech Airlines, often in the form of very unfavourable purchases of assets of the carrier.
The most loss-making transaction was the purchase of Holidays Czech Airlines for more than half a billion Czech crowns; the company then terminated its main business only a few months after the transaction.
The airport has already made considerable checks on the condition of individual buildings, runways or taxiways. “Now we know exactly what is already in a critical condition and where we can wait with repairs. We have a problem on some taxiways; they are already in a poor condition and we must therefore repair them as soon as possible this year,” added Řehoř.
The amount of money spent on investments and repairs is to be increased from last year’s 600 million, to roughly twice the amount this year.
