Why Poland Is Planning Europe’s Biggest Airport

The village of Baranow, Poland, is a bucolic place, with little more than a general store, a school named after Pope John Paul II, and a church whose spire juts above groves of apple and pear trees. Rafal Milczarski wants to see it bulldozed and filled with screaming jetliners.

The chief executive officer of LOT Polish Airlines SA says his company and his country need a modern airline hub to serve Warsaw, 40 kilometers (25 miles) to the east. In place of modest farmhouses surrounded by flower beds, Milczarski envisions terminals, hangars, and runways—a 70 billion zloty ($19 billion) project after new rail links and highways are included—to handle 45 million passengers a year and rival Heathrow in London, Charles de Gaulle in Paris, and Schiphol in Amsterdam. “Central Europe needs a proper aviation hub,” Milczarski says in his office at state-owned LOT’s current home base, a cramped air facility named after composer Frederic Chopin that opened in 1934. “We are going to be part of planning it and building it.”