A historic summer at Copenhagen Airport
11-Aug-2016 Close to three million people travelled through Copenhagen Airport in July, the highest number ever in a single month. Passenger numbers were 9.6% higher than in July of last year.
The rainy summer in Denmark made many people pack their suitcases and head to more sunny climes. Almost three million people travelled through Copenhagen Airport in July, which was 9.6% more than in the same month of last year - and a new record: Never before have so many people travelled through the airport in a single month.
"Having close to three million passengers passing through the airport in a single month was much more than we had expected. We are developing the airport to serve 40 million passengers annually, and this month's passenger number marks an important milestone on the journey attracting additional growth to Denmark. The high number of summer travellers shows that Denmark is an attractive holiday destination and also that a lot of people from Denmark chose to travel abroad for their summer holidays. Many people chose the well-known destinations in southern Europe, but the biggest change was on the long-haul intercontinental routes. We saw a 10% year-on-year increase in passenger numbers on those routes," said Thomas Woldbye, Copenhagen Airport's CEO.
A number of new long-haul routes out of Copenhagen have been opened since last year, including to Boston; and several airlines use larger aircraft today on their services and have added more frequencies.
European traffic grew by 9.5%, and in this connection, and Thomas Woldbye especially points to the strong growth in traffic to the popular summer destinations in Spain:
"People in Denmark are very fond of travelling to Spain for their summer holidays, and this year we have seen a 30% increase in traffic to Palma and a 40% increase to Malaga compared with July of last year. Obviously, there are many reasons why so many more people chose to travel there this year, but the recent unrest in Turkey, for example, probably made many Danes choose other destinations, including Spain, this year," said Thomas Woldbye.
Year-to-date traffic at Copenhagen Airport was up by 10.7%, and a total of 16,693,074 passengers travelled through the airport in the first seven months of the year.