Competitive situation

Copenhagen Airport’s catchment area comprises partly the “local” catchment area, defined as the area from which people can reach Copenhagen Airport by car within two to three hours, and partly the transfer market, defined as the Nordic countries, Northern Germany and the Baltic Rim. About a third of the passengers are transfer passengers. In the transfer market, Copenhagen Airport competes with all major international airports in Northern Europe.

Scandinavia’s largest airport

Copenhagen Airport is the largest airport in Scandinavia in terms of number of passengers, percentage of transfer passengers and number of routes. The importance of Copenhagen Airport as a northern European traffic hub is also reflected in the fact that the airport is seventeenth in the world in terms of the number of international passengers served.

Copenhagen Airport is located in the centre of the Øresund region, which is the most densely populated region in Scandinavia, with a good infrastructure and a high concentration of universities, research centres and international companies in industries such as pharmaceuticals, biotech, IT and telecommunications.

By virtue of this unique geographic location, Copenhagen Airport is the nearest international airport for a majority of the Danish population and for more than a third of the population of Sweden, who increasingly use the Øresund Link as their direct access to the airport. The number of people living within three hours’ drive from the airport is 6.5 million.

Route development

The aviation industry is going through a time of upheaval with intensifying competition not only among airlines but also among the airports of Europe.

The backdrop for this trend is the liberalisation of European air traffic, which means that the airlines’ traditional network concepts are increasingly being supplemented with low-cost concepts, with the airlines opening routes from airports that offer an attractive market combined with efficient and flexible handling of air traffic.

In Scandinavia, Copenhagen Airport mainly competes with the airports in Stockholm and Oslo; its competitors in northern Europe are regional airports such as Berlin, Hamburg and major traffic hubs such as London, Amsterdam and Frankfurt.

In this intensified competition, it is more important than ever for CPH to market itself to airlines worldwide and come up with proposals for new routes. CPH has a thorough knowledge of the Scandinavian market, and it supplies individual market surveys, statistics and other specialist knowledge which can be used as an important basis for the individual airlines when they are deciding whether to establish a new route or expand traffic on an existing route out of Copenhagen Airport.