Copenhagen Airport is again the world's best at attracting new routes.
At the world's leading aviation conference, World Routes, in Durban, South Africa, airlines from all over the world have rated Copenhagen Airport the world's best at route development for the second time in three years.
After a shared second place in 2014, Copenhagen Airport last night again won the award as the world's best at route development in the category 'airports between 20 and 50 million passengers'. This happened at the World Routes conference in Durban, where airlines from all over the world rated Copenhagen Airport best ahead of the airports in Abu Dhabi, Brussels, Dublin, Munich and Vienna.
It's extremely important to Copenhagen and to Denmark that the airlines have once again rated us the world's best airport at route development. This is recognition of our extensive marketing efforts to develop and present business cases to airlines, and I am proud and honoured that we have now won the title as the world's best twice and have been nominated as many as three times," said Thomas Woldbye, CEO of Copenhagen Airports A/S.
Routes generate growth
Previously, a report from Copenhagen Economics has shown that an international air route has an economic value of up to DKK 200 million, partly because it attracts more business and leisure travellers to the country. Most recently, a report from Oxford Research shows that a realisation of Copenhagen Airport's growth vision, Expanding CPH, about growth in the number of routes corresponding to 40 million passengers at Copenhagen Airport would potentially create up to 84,000 new jobs in Denmark as a whole. In other words: The economic significance of international air routes is enormous. For this reason, Copenhagen Airport is continually focusing on attracting new routes to Denmark.
International air routes generate growth, jobs and investment. As a consequence, competition among airports to attract new routes has intensified over the past 10-15 years. We therefore see it as a fantastic recognition that we have now twice been rated the world's best at route development in the past three years," said Ole Wieth Christensen, Director of Airline Sales & Route Development for Copenhagen Airport.
Rated by airlines
"One of the reasons we appreciate this award so much is that the airlines do the rating. It is an indication that the airlines consider our research, route data and proposals for the development of new and existing routes to be very useful," said Ole Wieth Christensen.
The 21st World Routes conference is currently taking place in Durban. The conference is an annual event at which some 2,500 delegates from 250 airlines, 650 airports and 170 tourism organisations worldwide meet to discuss the development of new air routes.