Building for the future: Copenhagen Airport to spend 5 billion on expanding terminal

Development will aim to smooth out the bottlenecks where thousands pass by one another in relatively confined spaces

Copenhagen Airport has confirmed it will be spending 5 billion kroner on a redevelopment that will change a part of the airport that most travellers pass through.

The airport has never spent so much money on a single project, according to Berlingske.

The remodeling of Terminal 3 will eventually expand the airport by 60,000 sqm.

Bottleneck problem
“The construction is taking place in the heart of the airport: where many passengers pass by one another. Today we have a bottleneck problem. This expansion will solve that,” said Thomas Woldbye, the CEO of Copenhagen Airport, told Berlingske.

The expansion was launched shortly before the corona era, but then postponed until the airport could assess the impact of the pandemic on aviation.

Completed in 2027, the expansion will let passengers pass through customes more quickly with the addition of a new, state-of-the-art baggage handling system.

Thus the airport will be able to keep up with the anticipated growth in passengers in the coming years.

Eyes on the future
“We must have a plan for what this airport will look like 10 or 20 or 30 years from now. This project will make room for many parts of the airport to handle up to 50 million passengers,” said Woldbye.

Copenhagen Airport had a total of 22.1 million passengers in 2022 – a number expected to increase in the coming decades.

ACI Europe, the airport industry association, expects that by 2025 aviation will return to the same passenger level as before the corona crisis, although some will opt out of air travel due to the climate impact.