Warsaw Chopin Airport covers 834 hectares (2,060 acres) of land and handles approximately 300 scheduled flights daily, including a substantial number of charters.

London, Frankfurt, Paris, and Amsterdam are the busiest international connections, while Kraków, Wrocław, and Gdańsk are the most popular domestic ones.

In 1924,[7] when urban development around Warsaw's aerodrome at Mokotów Field (Pole Mokotowskie) began affecting air traffic, the Ministry of Railways purchased land near the village of Okęcie to construct a new airport.

On 29 April 1934, the Polish president, Ignacy Mościcki, opened Central Airport (Okęcie), which from then on took over the handling of all traffic from the former civilian aerodrome at Pole Mokotowskie.

[8] In the weeks after its opening, a journalist from the magazine Flight and Air Defence of Poland reported the following: "In a large pastel-coloured hall, we see a ticket office, a customs post, telegraph and post office, police station and a kiosk with various newspapers etc... On the first (upper) floor, there is a restaurant and viewing terrace, from where one can see the entire territory of the airport."

[citation needed] With the building finished in 1933, the new modernist premises of the Warsaw airport cost the State Treasury around zl 10 million.

The new complex included three hangars, exhibition space, garages, and of course a large, modern terminal building with a concrete taxiway complete with stands for a number of aircraft.

The state, as a result, marked a number of air corridors for use by civil airlines, whilst radio stations were established to regulate such traffic and divert it away from sensitive and restricted areas.

By 1937, the airport had also received new radio navigation equipment and was using Lorenz beam technology to assure the safety of landings and approaches over Warsaw, during periods of poor visibility or bad weather.

During this period, the airport also received its first concrete runway and taxiways; these were left undamaged until the very final days of the war, despite numerous attacks by both the Home Army and Soviet Armed Forces.

[12] By the end of the 1940s, the airport had been reconnected with most of Poland's most important cities and a number of international services, including those to Moscow, Belgrade, Berlin, Bucharest, Budapest, Brussels, Copenhagen, Prague and Stockholm.

In 1956, maintenance of Okęcie was transferred from LOT Polish Airlines to state administration, then later in 1959, on the government's initiative, a decision was made to reconstruct the airport's main terminal; this, however, did not actually take place until 1964.

[citation needed] Political events of the early 1980s caused a decline in passenger traffic, but already by 1983, there was renewed growth, especially on international routes.

In the face of economic reform in the late 1980s, there was also a need to create a new managing body for airports and air traffic in Poland.

[citation needed] A network of multi-storey car parks and access roads was also built, and with their completion, Warsaw gained a modern terminal with a capacity of 3.5 million passengers a year.

[18] An underground railway station connected to Warsaw's suburban rail system was opened in June 2012 in time for the UEFA Euro 2012 football championships.

[20] The airport has two intersecting runways, whose configuration and available taxiways under current rules permit 34 passenger operations (takeoffs or landings) per hour.

The south hall contains the check-in areas A and B (former Terminal 1) was built in 1992 with a capacity for 3.5 million passengers per year to replace the ageing complex from the Communist era.

[131] Żwirki i Wigury, named after the celebrated aviators who won the Challenge International de Tourisme in 1932, is the main artery leading to the airport.