Prague Airport Brand Guidelines: Ruzyně 1937, a 2008 Company & the Václav Havel Name

A government decision of 1929, a building site run by hand and a white-tiled terminal.

Prague Airport is the English name of Letiště Praha, the company that runs Václav Havel Airport Prague, which the company describes as the largest airport in the Czech Republic, on the western edge of the city at Ruzyně. The company says its sole shareholder is the Czech state, represented by the Ministry of Finance, and that it employs about 2,700 people.

The airport is older than the company by seven decades. The company’s history page says the Czechoslovak government approved a proposal for a new airport in 1929; Czech Wikipedia adds that a flat plain known as Dlouhá míle, beside the village of Ruzyně, was chosen to replace the first main airport at Kbely. Construction began in July 1933, and both sources say the contractors were asked to use as little machinery as possible so that the work would employ more people during the economic crisis.

The result was a landmark of Czech functionalism. Czech Wikipedia credits the airport plan to the architect Adolf Benš, with ancillary buildings by Kamil Roškot, and says the terminal and its control tower were clad in white tiles, which earned the building the nickname “kachlíkárna,” roughly “the tile house.” It adds that the project won a gold medal at the international exhibition in Paris in 1937. Flights began in 1937: the company dates the first landing to 5 March, a Douglas DC-2 on a domestic service from Piešťany via Zlín and Brno, while Czech Wikipedia gives 5 April. In both accounts an international flight from Vienna arrived an hour later.

The occupation changed the airport’s role. The company’s history page says that during the German occupation of 1939–1945 the airport was taken over by the occupying authorities and Czechoslovak air services were suspended. The company says the runways came through May 1945 almost undamaged, so civil flying resumed quickly after the war.

A new terminal of 1968, a state company of 2008 and a rename in 2012.

Post-war growth called for a second airport beside the first. The company says the government decided in 1960 to build a new terminal to the north of the original, construction began in 1964 and the North Terminal, today’s Terminal 1, opened in June 1968 with main runways extended to 4.3 kilometres. Czech Wikipedia names its architects as Karel Filsak and Karel Bubeníček. In 1986, the company says, the 1937 building was restored with respect for its functionalist architecture; now called Terminal 4, it mainly serves state and official flights.

Traffic after 1989 brought the next wave. Czech Wikipedia says the north terminal was rebuilt between 1989 and 1993 to a competition design by Petr Franta and Michal Brix. The company says a new terminal opened in June 1997 and that the airport passed 10 million passengers for the first time in 2005. Terminal 2, for flights within the Schengen area, opened in stages in September 2005 and January 2006; Czech Wikipedia credits its design to the studios Nikodem a Partner and Mansfeld IDC.

The company itself is younger. Letiště Praha says it was established in 2008 as part of the transformation of the state enterprise Správa Letiště Praha, and its company details give 1 December 2008 as the date of its entry in the Companies Register. From 2011 to 2018 it sat inside a holding structure called Czech Aeroholding; in 2018 a merger dissolved the holding companies and moved their assets into Prague Airport.

The airport’s name changed in 2012. The company says the Czech government approved the step in March 2012 and that on 5 October 2012, the anniversary of the birth of Václav Havel, the first president of the Czech Republic, Prague–Ruzyně Airport was officially renamed Václav Havel Airport Prague, at a ceremony that included an exhibition of photographs of Havel.

Traffic has since passed its earlier peak. The company gives 17,750,528 passengers for 2025, a record, with 84 airlines serving 194 destinations. The Prague news site Prague Daily reported on 22 October 2026 that the winter schedule for 2026/27 offered 145 destinations and 69 airlines, with London the most frequently served city.

How airport operators present themselves.

An airport operator presents itself in two registers at once. Passengers meet the airport: its name, its signs, its terminals and its departure boards. Investors, governments and partner cities meet the operator: the company that holds the concession, publishes traffic figures and announces new terminals. Many operators keep these two faces apart, with a passenger-facing airport name and a separate corporate name for the group behind it.

Inside the terminal, the identity is carried mostly by wayfinding. Signs are set in a clear sans-serif, in short words with arrows and pictograms, and colour is used to separate departures, arrivals, transfers and ground transport. Some operators describe their signage as a system in its own right: VINCI Airports, for example, says its customer signage and furniture come in several ranges, so that each airport in its network can choose items to suit its size and budget.

Online, the airport becomes a guide to places. Route maps, destination pages and airline lists show where a traveller can fly, while terminal and runway photography, often taken at dawn or dusk, gives the airport a recognisable image. Retail, dining and parking pages present the terminal as a place to spend time, and some operators extend this into an “airport city” of hotels, offices and transport links around the runways.

The corporate layer is plainer. Owners and concession holders publish newsrooms, traffic reports, logo downloads and press photography, and they describe their airports by passenger numbers, routes and terminal projects, with dates. For designers, the category shows how one identity can work at walking pace for a hurried traveller and, at the same time, as a sober record for shareholders and the public authorities that grant the concessions.

Four terminals, three languages of signage and one name for the city’s gateway.

Prague Airport presents itself as a gateway rather than a monument, but its oldest building is part of the story. The white-tiled terminal of 1937, now Terminal 4, was restored in 1986 with respect for its functionalist architecture, the company says, while Terminals 1 and 2 handle passenger flights. The company’s own pages give the history in eras, from the 1930s to a programme it calls Václav Havel Airport Prague 2030+, which it describes as the largest modernisation in the airport’s history.

Signage has been an area of testing. The trade site Airport Technology reported on 12 August 2019 that the airport had installed eight digital signage systems at the entrance to Pier B in Terminal 1, showing travel information in six languages: English, Czech, Arabic, Russian, Korean and Chinese. The language changed through the day according to passenger movement, and pictograms pointed to nearby services. The trial was set to run until the end of October 2019, with wider installation planned if it succeeded.

Retail is presented in the same terminal-by-terminal way. The Moodie Davitt Report reported on 23 January 2019 that a new 2,200-square-metre commercial zone had opened in Terminal 2, which serves Schengen flights while Terminal 1 handles flights outside the Schengen area. In 2015, the company says, it gathered its car parks under a single brand, Aeroparking. Its website, as seen in November 2026, loads font files for Inter and Neo Sans.

For a design guide, Prague Airport shows how a functionalist landmark, later terminals and an honorary name can share one identity without hiding the airport’s older layers. Compare Budapest Airport, another Central European capital airport renamed after a national figure, and Copenhagen Airport, another European capital airport in this series. For this guide we use Vltava deep blue, tile white and an ochre with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Prague Airport’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.