SAS further expands at Aarhus as international traffic more than doubles

Upcoming new routes at Scandinavia’s fastest growing airport continue to be added as October-published news by SAS included Aarhus with two new international routes from the Danish city commencing in April 2019.  Rome in Italy will be served directly for the very first time and Faro on the Algarve Coast will see the first direct scheduled service from Aarhus to Portugal.  

Since opening its international base in Aarhus in March 2018, SAS has opened 7 new international routes, and the two new services from April 2019 bring the total up to 10 network points.  Flights to Faro on the Portuguese Algarve coast will operate weekly by Airbus A320neo and are expected to appeal to golfers and vacation home owners as well as sunseekers, being the only direct scheduled service from mainland Denmark and the longest from Aarhus at almost 4 hours.  The connection with Rome’s Fiumicino Airport will be operated by 90-seat CRJ-900 aircraft and be the very first time that Aarhus-Rome has been serviced directly.

“Rome has been a destination our customers have been crying out for”, commented the Airport’s David Surley – Head of Airline Relations, “while at first you would think this is a great new link for Danes to reach one of Europe’s most celebrated capitals, it is also an inbound market of significant demand growth in recent times as Aarhus has seen northbound visitor numbers from southern European markets including Italy, Spain and Greece rise sharply year-on-year”.   

International traffic at Aarhus has been experiencing unprecedented growth in 2018.  The year opened with strong international development of +37% and overall growth of +9% in the first quarter, then between April and June the increase climbed to +78% international and +34% total customer numbers.  Most recently, the Airport revealed an even greater quarterly growth rate for July to September of +45% total passengers and more than double the number of international customers at +110% versus the same period last year.  

“It’s an exciting time, we have many new routes secured, around one per month this last year and numerous exciting services still to come as easyJet open direct flights from London Gatwick in November and already four new Aarhus destinations for 2019 including Zakynthos and Chania (Crete) in addition to the new SAS routes.  For me of note is Faro on the Atlantic Algarve coast, as this is our first scheduled route to Portugal and one our customer base has been asking for in great numbers.  It becomes our 15th new route since 2016”, said Surley, “and we have seen enormous success with hot spots like Split and Nice for example this summer while our Munich service by SAS will be five-weekly for the coming winter ski season providing extraordinarily convenient access to the Alps as well as serving business flyers; all of these are served only from Aarhus in mainland Denmark”.       

VisitAarhus data for 2018 to-date indicates that inbound international visitors continue to soar since 2017’s European Capital of Culture put Scandinavia’s fifth largest metropolitan area firmly on the tourism map.  The fastest growing tourism economy in the Nordic region for over five years with +65% international visitor volume, business and leisure visitor numbers alike continue to climb as hotel, congress and conference centre capacity continue to develop at an unprecedented pace.