Copenhagen Airport completes revamp

In a bid to accommodate the rise in foreign passengers, the airport in Kastrup has finished renovation work costing hundreds of millions of kroner

admin

Dec 14, 2012

Copenhagen Airport's busy Pier C area, which caters to all intercontinental flights coming in and out of the Danish capital, has opened this week following renovation work costing 255 million kroner. The area will aim to stop passenger congestion and bottlenecks from occurring at security and passport control.

“The first impression of Denmark is very important so we have added 1,900 new square metres, which includes an expansion of the airport security check area and more boxes for police passport control in Pier C,” Thomas Woldbye, the managing director of Copenhagen Airport, told Ekstra Bladet tabloid. “That will increase capacity by close to 50 percent and reduce waiting times.”

Copenhagen Airport welcomed over 22.7 million passengers in 2011 − more than any other Nordic airport and over three million more than Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport in second place.

All passengers travelling to and from countries not in the EU or the Schengen Region must go through Pier C. Aside from the security and passport control remodelling, there will also be new lounges and stairwells and an additional 2,200 sqm arrival tier.

It is hoped that the construction project will prove as popular with the prospective passengers as it is with the government.

“An attractive airport with good connections is the path to growth. Export and foreign investment depend on customers and investors having positive connections with Denmark,” the trade and investment minister, Pia Olsen Dyhr (Socialistisk Folkeparti), told Ekstra Bladet. “So I hope that the Pier C expansion will lead to more airlines choosing to add routes to and from Copenhagen.”

Dyhr went on to underline how the airport is one of the biggest single employment sites in the country, with over 22,000 workers distributed amongst 500 businesses, and how an expansion of Pier C will help secure their futures.

A number of airlines are already poised to jump at the new possibilities generated by the Pier C revamp. From February, Emirates will have a Boeing B777 with 428 seats making ports of call at Pier C, as will SAS (flights to San Francisco) and Royal Air Maroc (to Casablanca) in March, Singapore Airlines (to Singapore) in April and Air Canada (to Toronto) next summer.

The construction process has lasted 14 months, and the total size of the extension is 5,100 sqm.