FLUG REVUE February 2003: Stockholm airport seeks expansion

STOCKHOLM-ARLANDA: THE BIGGEST AIRPORT IN THE NORTH

By Patrick Hoeveler

Stockholm-Arlanda is in the process of commissioning its third runway and is already planning for two more runways – a luxury that other airports can only dream of. There is plenty of land available. But the biggest airport in northern Europe still has an uphill struggle ahead of it. In particular, there are two developments currently of concern to the Scandinavians, as Maria Wall Petrini, Manager Strategic Business Development, explaines. “As a result of September 11th, 2001, we lost Delta and American, and they are unlikely to return in the near future either.” At the moment only SAS still offers direct connections to the USA, to Chicago and New York. The third scheduled connection is Thai Airways' route to Bangkok.

Arlanda airport

“The downturn in the Swedish economy, especially in the IT and communication sectors, hit us particularly hard and arrived faster than anticipated.” Passenger numbers are down by 9% on the previous year, and flight movements by 11%. However, international traffic is picking up slightly, compared with domestic connections. “We'd already experienced this phenomenon before, in the Gulf War: domestic traffic stayed down compared with the previous figures.” Moreover, according to Wall Petrini, there is strong competition from the railways and also from road transport. Additionally, a lot of people are deterred by the longer waiting times caused by the more stringent security checks.

Arlanda is located in the catchment area of four million people, almost half the population of Sweden, and is well connected to the capital city by the “Arlanda Express” train, which only takes twenty minutes to reach the main train station. With about 18.1 million passengers in 2001, 11.4 million of them international and 6.7 million domestic, the airport is just ahead of its closest rival, Copenhagen, and lost only 1% compared with the previous year. However, only 12% were transfer passengers, as 75% of passengers come from Sweden.

For this reason, Copenhagen, London and Göteborg are the most popular destinations out of a total of 167, 128 of them international. Altogether, 60 international and eight national airlines are represented in Arlanda, although SAS accounts for half of the traffic.

These number are likely to increase when the third runway comes on line, which will raise capacity from 73 flight movements to 90 slots per hour and thus make 25 million passengers per year possible. After a possible positive decision from the regional environmental court in January which was needed due to a change in the approach and departure routes, the runway could enter service at the end of March.

In order to be able to see the new runway, the Swedes have built a new, 83m high control tower, which was officially opened in December 2001. The tower, which is decorated by a Finnish artist with excerpts from the work of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, recently won a prize from the European Concrete Societies Network.

At present the airport is in discussions with the community regarding a fourth runway for the period from 2010/2015. Given a 15-year lead time for the third runway, work must be started now, according to Wall Petrini. After all, the contract regarding the use of the Stockholm city airport Bromma, with a capacity of one million passengers per year, expires in 2011. If it is not renewed, then Arlanda will take over that traffic and could then have problems without a fourth runway. Although additional land is available for a fifth runway, this is still “a long way off”, she says.

By then, the ownership structure could also have changed. Like Bromma and 17 other Swedish airports, Arlanda is owned by the Swedish civil aviation authority, which is also responsible for air traffic control and regulatory supervision of air transport. As Maria Wall Petrini confirms, privatisation appears unlikely at the present time. It is more likely that the authority will be split up into three autonomous areas. The airports could then constitute a separate company, in which the state holds a financial state.

Meanwhile, the new Pier F concourse in Terminal 5 is already in service, albeit only on one side. The new central building between Terminals 4 and 5 is expected to open in October 2003.

An even bigger project is intended to strengthen the second leg of the airport: with the Cargo City, which is scheduled for completion in 2005 along with a railway connection, Arlanda is planning to expand its cargo activities and will benefit from the absence of a general ban on night flights. DHL has been operating from here since 2001 and is therefore giving up several outposts in some smaller airports in Sweden, and the Swedish Post Office is now in the process of building a sorting centre. TNT is another resident freight company.

Moreover, the airport planners are pinning their hopes on its geographic position. “We are closer to Japan and China than Frankfurt, for example.” This fact is especially significant, as “freight is very important as a way of attracting intercontinental traffic,” says the airport strategist. Arlanda is also planning to expand its good position in the East and Far East. However, skimming off the traffic from Sweden which departs from Denmark is likely to be difficult.

The competition in Sweden's next-door neighbour state offers more direct flights, as SAS has its central hub in Copenhagen. Despite discussions, SAS is unlikely to set up a second hub in Arlanda. “We therefore have a lot of negotiating to do with other airlines,” says Wall Petrini. As well as increasing the number of intercontinental connections, Stockholm is also hoping to expand towards the Baltic. “That is an important market for us.”

The airport is therefore expecting annual passenger numbers to break through the 25 million mark by 2010. The competition from Ryanair in Skavsta and Vasteras is not a cause of concern to the strategists, although a certain effect is visible on the routes to London. The competition with the smaller and therefore cheaper airports is more in the cargo sector, according to Wall Petrini.

Nevertheless, Arlanda would like to attract new low-cost carriers like Goodjet. The Swedish airline with its Airbus A320's was on the point of insolvency after a few months. It now has a new owner from the Netherlands, the MCI investment company, and is to be re-launched shortly. In any case, the airport is actively wooing new airlines from all areas and is conducting negotiations on several fronts, as Wall Petrini confirms. “We never wait!”

Both airlines and passengers should be convinced by the advantages of the large airport: “We want to be an effective, but also a nice airport with a lot of direct connections.” As is the case virtually everywhere in Sweden, design plays a very important role here. Hence the corporate image of Arlanda is also set to change in the next few years: “We want to establish a red thread in design.” Given the unusual new tower, it will be interesting to see what they come up with.

From page 72 of FLUG REVUE 2/2003

Last updated 15 January 2003

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