Ruzyně is the biggest airport in the Czech Republic. It served around 12 million passengers during 2006, which makes it one of the busiest airports in Central and Eastern Europe. If you fly to or through the Czech Republic, you will most likely be going through Ruzyně.
If you don't speak Czech, it may be difficult to pronounce the word Ruzyně. The word has three syllables (Ru-zy-ně). The first syllable is pronounced similar to English ruin, except the leading R is voiced (just like in German or Swedish rund). The second syllable is pronounced exactly as in English zip. The last syllable is pronounced as the N in English new followed by the E in English echo.
Ruzyně has four terminals, although two of them (South 1 and South 2) are rarely used, except for VIP, private, and some charter flights. Terminal North 2 handles traffic to and from the Schengen countries and Terminal North 1 handles most of the non-Schengen traffic.
When you travel through Ruzyně airport, you will see the letters PRG on your baggage tags. PRG is the IATA code of the airport. (IATA or International Air Transport Association is an international organization grouping most of the world's airlines). While this code is commonly used among passengers, a different four-letter code is used in aviation (like on aviation maps). This code is assigned by another organization, International Civil Aviation Organization or ICAO, and in the case of Ruzyně it is LKPR.
Here you can see some pictures taken from the place where aircraft usually park. The low buildings in the back, where the airplanes park, are the terminal buildings North 1 and North 2, the higher buildings in the background are the offices of the airport employees and parking lots.
The last two pictures of the previous set portray the Air Traffic Control Tower of the airport. The Tower is the tallest building on the pictures. This is where the Air Traffic Controllers work, from where they can see everything that is happening on the runways, taxiways, aircraft stands, and all other areas of the airport. Air traffic contreollers and Ground controllers are responsible for organizing the air traffic around the airport and the movement of all planes, vehicles, and people in the airport areas where aircraft can go to.
I also took a few videos with my camera. That first one that you an see here will give you an idea where we were moving (you will need a player capable of displaying Windows Media Video 9, e.g. Windows Media Player). If you have a slower internet connection, you will probably not be able to view the video on the fly, instead you will need to save it to your computer and then open in a media player.
Copyright notice: Text and images copyright by Michal Řeháček.