Copenhagen Airport: More collaboration, new transfer options

Copenhagen Airport (CPH) has been aggressive in its efforts to attract more transfer passengers and strengthen the airport’s position as a key hub in northern Europe. One of the roads to growth is increased and improved collaboration among the airlines operating at Copenhagen Airport so that more passengers will have the opportunity to fly via Copenhagen.

To improve collaboration among the airlines, CPH recently held a so-called interline conference to which all airlines operating at the airport were invited. Twenty-three airlines attended the conference, at which opportunities for collaboration were discussed during the day at more than 90 meetings between the various airlines.

“The idea is to create the framework for the airlines to meet and identify the potential for greater collaboration. This could be anything from adjusting arrival and departure times to allow connections and collaboration on joint tickets to actual codeshare partnerships. The goal is to create more and better transfer products for the benefit of passengers, airlines and the airport,” said Carsten Nørland, vice president for sales at Copenhagen Airports.

New airlines on the CPH runway

The interline conference was organised by CPH for the fifth consecutive year, and airlines were asked to indicate in advance which airlines they wanted to meet with. The meetings, each lasting 20 minutes, were held on a tight schedule, ensuring that all participants benefited from the conference.

The attendees this year included several of the airlines that will begin flying to and from Copenhagen in 2010. One of them is Air Canada, which will be opening a daily service between Copenhagen and Toronto on 25 June.

“The interline conference is an excellent platform for making agreements designed to give us more passengers and improve our business. The conference acts as a kind of speed dating with scheduled meetings, a very efficient set-up,” said Robert Atkinson, general passenger sales manager for Air Canada.

“Obviously, we collaborate with our partners in the Star Alliance such as SAS, Blue1 and Widerøe, but the conference gives us an opportunity to make contacts with other airlines, perhaps also airlines we had not considered in advance,” said Atkinson.

Important contacts

Qatar Airways is another airline that will be starting operations from Copenhagen Airport in 2010 by launching a new service to Doha on 31 March. This airline also decided to come to the interline conference.

“The conference is a good opportunity to meet airlines that may be able to feed passengers to our service. As a new airline at Copenhagen, the key issue is to get contacts and have quick discussions of the opportunities. We can then follow up on those leads later on. We clearly expect to sign a number of contracts based on our discussions at the conference,” said Christian Deresjö, business performance officer with Qatar Airways.

The world’s best transfer airport

Copenhagen Airport is working on several fronts to become the world’s best transfer airport. As an example of this effort, the airport recently established a strategic partnership with SAS to enhance its transfer product at Copenhagen. Initially, the partnership will give the passengers of SAS and its alliance partners shorter travel times and more connections, with the minimum connection time decreasing from 40 to 30 minutes for a number of SAS connections at Copenhagen.

The partnership also includes initiatives such as better signposting and directions for passengers, better baggage handling, optimised parking of aircraft and joint marketing efforts to attract more transfer passengers. Altogether, these initiatives are expected to attract more than 200,000 additional transfer passengers to Copenhagen Airport per year.

(c) Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation. Date posted: 08-Mar-10