March 5, 2025, update: The airport will likely begin flights in the summer, although the official opening date has not been announced.
Vlora Airport hit the headlines in Albania when construction was paused last month. Workers halted their efforts, demanding fair pay. “They must understand the situation. Let them know employees are not showing up at work,” one worker boldly stated. Yet, despite their protests, the site hums back to life, eyes set on opening international flights by spring 2025.
The airport promises a seamless journey for tourists, drastically cutting travel time to Vlorë, previously dependent on the Tirana airport, 135 kilometres away. The Albanian government sparked this grand project in May 2017. By 2021, Mabetex International invested over 105 € (£88) million into the project’s initial phase, focusing on a runway and terminal.
Anticipation builds as infrastructure completion approaches December. The airport promises a 3.2 km (1.9-mile) runway, a 20,000-square-meter (12.43-square-mile) terminal, an operations tower, and a fire brigade house. Scheduled for March 2025, its runway is ready to welcome over a million passengers within the first nine months.
During a November visit, Deputy Prime Minister Belinda Balluku praised the innovative infrastructure, declaring: “The entire airport will be covered with solar panels. Problems won’t arise with plane landings and takeoffs. These panels will supply 5.2 MWH of renewable energy for the airport’s needs.” In Akerni, circa 135 kilometres (83 miles) north of Vlorë, the project faced engineering hurdles, being 2 meters (6.5 feet) below water level, resolved ingeniously with a drainage channel.
However, amid this excitement, environmentalists raise concerns as the construction occurs within the Vjosa-Narta Protected Area, home to more than 62 bird species safeguarded by EU directives.
Earlier this year, Taulant Bino from the Albanian Ornithological Society said:
As an NGO, we are not against airports in general. It has to make sense and unfortunately, from different perspectives, Vlora airport makes no sense. It is a protected area, a wetland of crucial importance [and] an important bird area.
On the other hand, it’s close to the Tirana airport. It makes no sense because the airports are very close to each other, so other proposals should be taken into consideration.
This site, home to 62 bird species under EU protection, could see their habitats threatened by this development. Albania’s famous Dalmatian pelican, whose numbers revitalised in recent years, now confronts potential devastation.
Since 2000, conservation efforts have bolstered pelican numbers from a dire few nests to 85 pairs by 2020. Despite these successes, the new airport casts a shadow over sustainable progress, raising alarms over migration paths from Africa to Europe.
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