CPH traffic report: Summer extended to include the autumn break

Friday 11 October, the last weekday before the autumn school break, was one of the busiest days of the year at Copenhagen Airport with 107,200 passengers passing through the terminals. It was plain, sunnier climes were the big draw for the holidaymakers.

“Danes clearly prefer to spend their autumn breaks at warmer destinations. Traffic to Spain and the Canaries trebles around the period of the autumn school break. Many people take an extra week and head for south-east Asia. Going via Dubai or Doha has become all the rage, and traffic to those destinations increases by 25-30 percent around the school break,” Copenhagen Airport CEO Thomas Woldbye explains.

For those going on an autumn holiday without small children, city breaks in popular big cities like London, Paris or Amsterdam are among the firm favourites. In the past few years, cities like Vienna, Zurich, Prague and Warsaw have also attracted more and more passengers.

“Holidaymakers travelling to and from Denmark have been the main driver of recent years’ traffic growth, while the number of business travellers has been relatively stable. During the past five years, the proportion of holiday travellers has grown from 57 to 68 per cent,” says Woldbye.

At the end of October, the airlines changed to their winter programmes which traditionally have fewer routes and departures than the busy summer programmes. This winter, however, the three largest airlines at Copenhagen Airport – SAS, Norwegian and Ryanair – have all launched new routes, including flights to Munich, Turin, Fuerteventura and the new skiing destination, Scandinavian Mountains.

“We’re really looking forward to January when SAS will be transferring its Los Angeles service to Copenhagen. That will strengthen our position as a hub as more passengers will choose to fly via Copenhagen rather than via Amsterdam, Frankfurt or London,” explains Woldbye.

Once again, in October, transfer traffic drove traffic growth. Compared to the same month last year, the number of passengers travelling via Copenhagen grew by 7.5 per cent.

Year to date a total of 26,027,911 passengers have traveled through the terminals at Copenhagen Airport – a tangency to last year’s record.