Copenhagen Airport (Danish: Københavns Lufthavn) (IATA: CPH, ICAO: EKCH) is the main international airport serving Copenhagen, Denmark and the Oresund Region. It is located on the island of Amager, 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) south of Copenhagen city centre, and 24 kilometres (15 mi) west of Malmö city centre on the other side of the Oresund Bridge. The airport lies mainly in the municipality of Tårnby, with a small portion in neighboring Dragør. It is the largest airport in the Nordic countries, and one of the oldest international airports in Europe.

The airport is the main hub out of three used by Scandinavian Airlines and is also a hub for Cimber Sterling, Thomas Cook Airlines Scandinavia and Norwegian Air Shuttle. Copenhagen Airport handles 60 scheduled airlines and serves more than 62,000 passengers per day; 22.7 million passengers passed through the facility in 2011, making it the busiest airport in the Nordic countries, with a maximum capacity of 83 loadings/hour and with room for 108 airplanes. Unlike other Scandinavian airports, a considerable share of the airport's passengers are international. The domestic part of the annual passengers is lower than 10%. The airport is owned by Københavns Lufthavne, which also operates Roskilde Airport. The airport employs 1700 staff (excluding shops, restaurants etc.).^[1]

Copenhagen Airport was originally called Kastrup Airport, since it is located in the small town of Kastrup, now a part of the Tårnby municipality. The formal name of the airport is still Copenhagen Airport, Kastrup, to distinguish it from Roskilde Airport, which was previously called Copenhagen Airport, Roskilde. Locally many people still call the airport just "Kastrup".

History

• 1925 (1925)  CPH opens for service on 20 April. One of the first private airports in the world, it opens with a grass runway.
• 1932 (1932)  6000 take-offs and landings in the year.
• 1936 (1936)  1939 New terminal, considered one of the finest examples of Nordic functionalism, is built (Architect: Vilhelm Lauritzen).
• 1941 (1941)  First hard-surface runway is built.
• 1946 (1946)  SAS is founded, an important event for Copenhagen Airport, as Copenhagen was to be the main hub for the airline. Traffic increases rapidly in the first years SAS operates. Also, Copenhagen Airport becomes Europe's third-largest.
• 1947 (1947)  On 26 January, a KLM DC-3 crashes at the airport after stopping en route to Stockholm. 22 people die, including the Swedish prince Gustav Adolf, and the American opera singer Grace Moore.
• 1948 (1948)  150 take-offs and landings per day, and 3000 passengers are handled per day.
• 1950 (1950)  378,000 passengers are handled.
• 1954 (1954)  11,000 tonnes of freight handled per year. SAS begins the world's first trans-polar route, flying initially to Los Angeles. The route proves to be a publicity coup, and for some years Copenhagen becomes a popular transit point for Hollywood stars and producers flying to Europe.
• 1956 (1956)  1 million passengers handled per year. CPH wins the award for the world's best airport.
• 1960s^[when?] With the advent of jet airliners, debate begins about a major expansion of the airport. Jets need longer runways than had previously been used, and plans are drawn up to expand the airport either into existing communities in Kastrup or onto Saltholm, a small island. Local protests ensue and expansion is stalled for some time.
• 1960 (1960)  On 30 April, Terminal 2, also designed by Lauritzen, opens. Also, a new control tower opens and the airport handles 2 million passengers per year.
• 1970s (1970s)  The airport suffers from acute space shortages, especially with the advent of large jets such as 747s. After initially deciding to expand to Saltholm, the project is eventually blocked by Denmark's parliament.
• 1973 (1973)  8 million passengers handled per year. The third (long) runway opens and the dual runway system (04L/22R-04R/22L) opens, strongly expanding the capacity of possible numbers of starts and landings.
• 1982 (1982)  The Cargo terminal opens.
• 1986 (1986)  A parking garage with 2400 spaces opens.
• 1991 (1991)  The airport is partially privatised.
• 1998 (1998)  Terminal 3 opens, and the airport handles 17 million (international) passengers per year.
• 1999 (1999)  Baggage handling system is modernised, and the Vilhelm Lauritzen terminal is moved 3.8 km down the runway to make room for new terminals, a hotel, and a train station for regional trains opens..
• 2000 (2000)  The airport handles 18.4 million passengers per year. The train system becomes international, linking the airport also to southern Sweden.
• 2001 (2001)  A five-star Hilton hotel with 382 beds opens at the airport. 267,000 take-offs and landings.
• 2005 (2005)  Macquaire Airport buys 52% of stocks.
• 2006 (2006)  Number of passengers exceeds 20 million for the first time (20.9 million).
• 2007 (2007)  A metro station opens, connecting the airport to the Copenhagen Metro.
• 2008 (2008)  A new control tower is opened by Naviair as part of a major renovation of the ATC system. Airport officials announce plan to build a new low-cost terminal at the facility, which is expected to be completed by 2010.
• 2009 (2009)  Macquaire Airport is spun off as MAp Airports.
• 2010 (2010)  The new low cost terminal CPH Go opens the 31st of October.

Airlines and destinations

Copenhagen Airport has four terminals. Terminal 1 is used for all domestic flights. Terminals 2 and 3 handle international flights (both Schengen and non-Schengen) and share a common airside passenger concourse as well as the arrivals section - which houses customs and baggage claim and is physically located in Terminal 3. The newest terminal, CPH Go, dedicated to low-cost carriers opened the 31st of October 2010. So far EasyJet is the only airline operating from this terminal. An all new Terminal 4 is currently being planned.

The airport is served by the following scheduled airlines:

Passenger

Notes

^1 Check-in via Terminal 2.
^2 3 weekly flights from Copenhagen to Bangkok via Phuket. No direct flight in the other way - from Phuket to Copenhagen.^[5]

Additionally, several airlines operate charter flights out of the airport, including:

Cargo airlines

Other facilities

SAS traffic office resides at the airport, and so do Cimber Sterling's. Thomas Cook Airlines has both its head- and traffic office here as well as a flight simulator center, OOA. All these reside at Copenhagen Airport South and in Dragør, Dragør Municipality together with a VIP-terminal. The VIP-terminal building is actually the very first terminal building, from the 1920s. It was moved about 2 km during the 1990s.

Special events

The current American President landed at the airport on four separate occasions. Bill Clinton in 1998, George W Bush in 2005 and Barack Obama twice, both in October and December 2009.

Ground transport

The airport can be accessed in various ways:

• Rail - the airport's station is located underneath Terminal 3 on the Øresund Railway Line.
  • The station is served by Øresundstogene which are operated by DSBFirst. These trains have a dense stopping pattern insde Denmark, like local trains, going to the city centre and to Helsingør. They also go as regional/interregional trains to Sweden, to Malmö, Gothenburg, Kalmar and Karlskrona, with many intermediate stops.
  • DSB, the national Danish operator have InterCity and InterCityExpress trains using this station, going to domestic cities such as Esbjerg, Århus, Ålborg and Sønderborg or German Flensburg just by the border, and to Ystad in Sweden with a connecting ferry to the Danish island Bornholm
  • Also Swedish SJ have a few daily Express trains departures between Copenhagen central station to Stockholm and Gothenburg which stops at Kastrup underground train station.
• Metro - Line M2 of the Copenhagen Metro links the airport with the city centre. The Metro station is two floors above the underground rail station and continues on elevated tracks until it goes underground after 5 stations.
• Bus - Movia buses 5A, 35, 36 and Gråhundbus line 999 all stop at the airport; bus 888, express-bus to Jutland, also stops at the airport. Movia bus 2A stops near the airport. There are long-distance buses to Sweden and Norway operated by Swebus: 820 to Oslo via Gothenburg and 832 to Uppsala via Stockholm. GoByBus and Bus4You also operate the same routes.
• Motorway - the E20 runs right by the airport. The E20 uses the toll road Oresund Bridge to Sweden. The airport has 8,600 parking spaces. Customers can pre-book their parking space online by visiting the Copenhagen Airport website [1].

Incidents and accidents

• 26 January 1947 (1947-01-26)  Douglas Dakota, PH-TCR of KLM crashed after takeoff from Copenhagen, killing all 22 onboard, including Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden. The delayed KLM flight from Amsterdam had landed at Copenhagen for a routine stop before continuing to Stockholm. Soon after the Douglas DC-3 aircraft took off, it climbed to an altitude of about 50 metres (150 feet), stalled, and plummeted nose-first to the ground where it exploded on impact. Also aboard the ill-fated flight was American singer and actress Grace Moore. The investigation showed that the crash had been caused by a forgotten rudder lock. Short of time, the captain never performed his checklist and took off not realizing the lock was still in place.
• 17 November 1957 (1957-11-17)  Vickers Viscount G-AOHP of British European Airways crashed at Ballerup after the failure of three engines on approach to Copenhagen Airport. The cause was a malfunction of the anti-icing system on the aircraft.^[6]
• 28 August 1971 (1971-08-28)  a MALÉV Ilyushin Il-18, HA-MOC crashed into the sea while executing an instrument approach. The main cause of the accident was microburst, a particularly dangerous and unpredictable meteorological phenomenon. 23 passengers and the crew of 9 died. 2 passengers survived. The captain of the plane was World War II flying ace of the Royal Hungarian Air Force, Dezs Szentgyörgyi. He was due to retire in less than 3 weeks.

See also

• List of the largest airports in the Nordic countries

References

 This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Air Force Historical Research Agency.

• AIP Denmark: Koebenhavn/Kastrup - EKCH
• VFR Flight Guide Denmark: Koebenhavn/Kastrup - EKCH

External links

• Official website