CPH: Strong growth on long-haul routes
Usually a somewhat slow month, January has become a significantly busier travel period at Copenhagen Airport. Close to 1.9 million travellers passed through the airport, with the long-haul services accounting for much of the growth.
While January is traditionally one of the slower months in aviation, at Copenhagen Airport the number of passengers was up by more than 200,000 to a total of 1,877,044 passengers. In other words, 2016 has kicked off with 13.4% year-on-year passenger growth. Particularly the long-haul, intercontinental routes attracted more passengers.
“Our intercontinental traffic rose more than 15% compared with January 2015. The increase was explained by new routes as well as more frequencies and larger aircraft on a number of routes. For example, Qatar Airways doubled the number of frequencies while Emirates upgraded its daily flight to Airbus A380. Moreover, Norwegian launched new routes to Las Vegas and the Caribbean. We now have 32 intercontinental routes, and more will be added during 2016, including new SAS routes to Miami and Boston,” said Thomas Woldbye, CEO of Copenhagen Airports A/S.
European traffic rose 13.8% year-on year, London standing out with an impressive 25% increase. Another contributor to the European traffic growth was an increase in passengers travelling to Denmark:
“We have seen several new airlines add routes to Copenhagen, and this has made more Europeans aware of Denmark and Copenhagen as a destination. A large proportion of the new passengers are leisure and business travellers visiting Denmark. This generates growth and jobs, particularly in the tourist industry, not just in Copenhagen, but all over Denmark,” said Mr. Woldbye.
1,877,044 passengers travelled through Copenhagen Airport in January 2016, which was 13.4% more than in January 2015. Domestic traffic was up 5.2%, European traffic climbed 13.5% and intercontinental traffic climbed 15.1%.