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Olsztyn-Mazury Airport (EPSY) is an international passenger and general aviation aerodrome near Szymany, roughly 10 km from Szczytno and about 59 km south of Olsztyn in Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, Poland. Built on a former Luftwaffe and later Polish Air Force base, it now offers an ILS-equipped runway and scheduled services, making it a useful and historically rich destination for visiting pilots in the Masurian Lake District.
Olsztyn-Mazury Airport lies in the Masurian Lake District of north-eastern Poland, serving the city of Olsztyn as well as the smaller town of Szczytno, close to which the field is actually situated. Operated by Warmia i Mazury Sp. z o.o. and branded as the 'gateway to the Masurian Lake District', it is a certified international airport handling scheduled and charter traffic. Its long, wartime-and-Cold-War history, culminating in a modern EU-funded rebuild, gives it added interest for a visiting simulator pilot beyond its straightforward single-runway layout.
The airfield sits at coordinates 53.4819 N, 20.9378 E, near the village of Szymany, about 10 km from the centre of Szczytno and roughly 59 km south of Olsztyn, close to the border between the Warmia-Masuria and Mazowsze regions. Field elevation is 449 ft. As a certified public-use international airport with an operating control service, it lies within controlled airspace associated with the aerodrome.
The airport has a single physical runway, 01/19, approximately 6531-6532 ft long with a hard paved surface, lit for night operations. Runway 01 is equipped with an ILS, providing an instrument approach into the field from the south-easterly direction.
The tower frequency is 118.025 MHz, with the callsign 'Mazury Information'. The field is equipped with an ILS serving runway 01, in addition to airport meteorological and technical sensors along the runway.
The airfield at Szymany dates back to 1933, when the area lay just inside German territory a few kilometres from the Polish border; around 100 hectares of forest were cleared to build a well-concealed strip intended as a temporary blitzkrieg facility, with a 1200 by 60 metre runway whose remains are still visible as a rectangular forest clearing near the current infrastructure. German military aviation used the site intensively at the outbreak of the Second World War before its role diminished to training flights, before activity picked up again after the invasion of the Soviet Union. Soviet forces occupied the airfield after the war but withdrew in autumn 1945, leaving it largely forgotten as the Masurian Lake District became part of Poland. Under Soviet pressure in the 1950s the airfield was expanded into an auxiliary base for the 1st Fighter Air Regiment of Minsk Mazowiecki, gaining a new concrete runway, taxiways, aprons and fuel infrastructure, and was raised to military class II status in 1963; other regiments based at Pruszcz Gdanski, Orneta, Malbork and Balice also used the field. For many years the airfield lacked a permanent control tower, relying instead on a mobile position mounted on a STAR 66 truck nicknamed 'krasula', with an NDB as the principal navigation aid and weather information obtained by telephone from Olsztyn or Warsaw. A proper control tower and further buildings were finally built in the second half of the 1970s. The airfield became surplus to Polish military requirements at the start of the 1990s and passed to the Military Property Agency in 1995, with the Mazury-Szczytno Airports company established the following year; the first civilian passenger flight, a LOT Polish Airlines ATR72, landed on 2 June 1996. Passenger charter flights, mostly to German cities such as Cologne, Dortmund, Hannover and Stuttgart, continued sporadically until 2003, after which the operating company folded with significant debts; talks with Ryanair in 2005 about resuming flights ultimately stalled. The airfield also drew international attention when it was revealed to have been used by the CIA in connection with a nearby black site prison around 2003. Between 2014 and 2015 the airport was substantially rebuilt with EU funding under the Regional Operational Programme Warmia and Mazury, gaining an extended and resurfaced runway, a new ILS system, a new terminal and a rail link, before reopening for scheduled flights on 20 January 2016 with a service to Berlin.
Following its 2014-2015 redevelopment, Olsztyn-Mazury Airport operates as a certified public-use international airport under the current EASA aerodrome certification framework, holding 4C code status. It offers aviation fuel in both AVGAS 100LL and JET A-1 grades, together with a full range of ground handling for passenger aircraft and around 27,000 square metres of parking apron. The airport has hosted scheduled and charter carriers including LOT Polish Airlines, Sprint Air, Adria Airways, Wizz Air and Ryanair since its 2016 reopening, alongside its role in general aviation.
