Copenhagen Airport is the most efficient in Europe

750 take-offs and landings. 80,000 passengers. 30,000-35,000 pieces of baggage. Every day. Running Copenhagen Airport is a complex jigsaw puzzle.

Every single day, situations arise that can displace the pieces of the huge jigsaw puzzle, which has to ensure that aircraft take off on time and that passengers pass through the airport quickly and safely.

Copenhagen Airport is so proficient at it that the world’s leading aviation researchers at the Air Transport Research Society (ATRS) have named the airport as the most efficient in Europe. This is the 12th time in 14 that Copenhagen Airport has won the award.

Highly skilled employees behind the award

“We’re really proud to win the award as Europe’s most efficient airport – and it’s largely down to our highly skilled employees,” says Copenhagen Airport’s CEO Thomas Woldbye.

“We slog hard every day to run an efficient and attractive airport,” continues Thomas Woldbye. “We achieve it by working closely with the airlines to reduce the overall cost of flying to and from Copenhagen. And we do that by listening to the passengers’ wishes and needs, and making it easy and fast for travellers to pass through the airport.”

Being efficient attracts air routes

One of the most important tasks for Copenhagen Airport is to attract new air routes and more departures – in stiff competition with the other big airports in Northern Europe. Efficiency plays a huge part in this:

“Scandinavia is a high-cost region, including for airlines. We need to be efficient to keep overall costs down. So being once again named Europe’s most efficient airport is important,” says Thomas Woldbye.

Danes are digital

The Danes are among the most digital people in the world. We bank online rather than trooping into our local branch, we shop on the internet, and we stream films and music at home on the sofa.

Digital also plays no small part in our travel lives. We find air tickets on the internet, check in on our mobiles, print out our baggage labels on the machines at the airport, hand over our suitcases at the self-service bagdrops, scan our boarding cards before the central security checkpoint and monitor flight departures on the airport’s app.

“The fact that the Danes are so digital has meant that we’ve been able to develop digital possibilities better than many of our airport colleagues around Europe,” says Thomas Woldbye.

Most efficient airport

Copenhagen Airport’s focus on optimising and automising is one of the reasons why Copenhagen has once again been named Europe’s most efficient airport.

The award is given annually by ATRS, which analyses and evaluates the efficiency of all sorts of airports.

ATRS’s citation also emphasises Copenhagen Airport’s ability to handle complexity. The fact that 94% of the traffic at Copenhagen Airport is international places great demands on areas such as security, baggage handling and transfers. But in spite of the daily complex jigsaw puzzle, CPH’s employees are more proficient than their colleagues in other European airports at working efficiently and keeping operating costs down.

Innovation must be part of the culture

“We have highly skilled employees, and the award must largely be attributed to the employees’ ability to independently and skilfully handle tasks and problems. Everyone is good at taking responsibility and coming up with suggestions and ideas,” says Thomas Woldbye, highlighting a new initiative that the airport has just launched to strengthen employee innovation:

“We’ve introduced a system in which all employees can quickly suggest a process or area where they think digital solutions could be used to advantage. We then look quickly at whether it’s something that can make our work easier. If it can, we can quickly roll it out across the airport.”