21.02.2006
Lower passenger charges pay off

Air Berlin, Germany’s largest low-cost carrier, has now finally confirmed that it is going to start up a service out of Copenhagen Airport. When the German-based low-cost carrier operates its first flight out of Copenhagen on 2 May, it also will be the first time the airline operates out of Scandinavia. Air Berlin is going to offer one daily frequency to each of Berlin and Hamburg, two daily frequencies to Düsseldorf on weekdays and one daily frequency on weekends.

“Flying out of Copenhagen Airport has become cheaper. Not only have we lowered our airport charges, but the political decision to phase out the Danish passenger tax over two years gives us a good trump in our sales efforts vis-à-vis the airlines – low-cost airlines in particular. Air Berlin is a good example of this. Each time one of their flights takes off from Copenhagen, the abolition of the DKK 75 tax saves about DKK 10,000 of costs. There is no doubt that we are going to see a clearly favourable effect on the number of new routes at the airport, which will benefit the entire region in the longer term,” said Niels Boserup, President & CEO of Copenhagen Airports.

Nine low-cost airlines

Including Air Berlin, there are now nine low-cost carriers to chose from for passengers wanting to fly low-cost out of Copenhagen Airport. Last year, low-cost carriers accounted for 10% of total traffic at Copenhagen Airport.

Copenhagen Airports’ charges are competitive: For example, charges are lower at CPH than at Stockholm, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Paris. Copenhagen Airport also has the lowest domestic charges in Denmark.