FLUG REVUE November 2002: Oslo airport is far out

OSLO'S NEW AIRPORT IN GARDERMOEN

By Christiane Rodenbücher

The geographical dimensions in Norway are unusual. From its northernmost to southernmost tips, the country measures 1,752 kilometres. The landscape features countless fjords and mountain ranges. This topography makes the 4.5 million inhabitants heavily reliant on a good transport infrastructure.

Oslo Gardermoen overview

Trips in excess of 200 or 300 km are often best undertaken by plane. A total of 54 airports, which in 2001 handled a total passenger volume of 26 million, are distributed over the entire country, and the largest of these is Oslo airport.

In 1998 this international airport was relocated from Fornebu, close to the centre of the capital, to Gardermoen, 47km to the north-east of Oslo. 30 years of consultation were required before the government finally made this decision in 1992. In the five-year period it took to build the airport, the responsible state-owned operating company, Oslo Lufthavn AS, invested a total of 19.7 billion Norwegian kroner (NKr), approximately Euro 2.66 billion.

"At that time everyone agreed that we needed to find a new site for the airport,” explains Nic. Nilsen (56), the present Chief Executive of Gardermoen and formerly Managing Director of Fornebu, in an interview with FLUG REVUE. "Before the move, we said that the old airport had a passenger capacity of 5 million, but in fact we were handling 10 million passengers.” Apart from its favourable location, conditions at the airport ceased to be comfortable in the mid-1990s. Again, with 40 aircraft movements per hour, the 2400m long runway was working flat out.

Today, on the parallel runway system in Gardermoen, up to 80 movements per hour can be handled, of which a maximum of 60 are presently used. Thus the civilian part of the airport, which prior to 1998 handled around one million charter passengers per year, was expanded. The military area continues to be reserved for the Royal Norwegian Air Force, as a cargo facility.

The final tally of passengers handled by Oslo airport in 2001, at just under 14 million, was just below the previous year, while ten years earlier it had been only 7.7 million. In the last quarter of 2001 passenger numbers dropped back by 10% compared with the same quarter of the previous year, both on international and on domestic scheduled flights.

In the latter segment, the decline was partly due to the introduction of new passenger charges and higher fares. "The three airlines SAS, Braathens and Coast Air were fighting tooth and nail for market share, with the result that the low-cost carrier Coast Air was forced out and SAS took over Braathens, as the strongest of the three. In the aftermath, the range of services was reduced and air fares were raised,” says Nilsen.

The biggest volume of passengers come from the area to the south-east of Oslo. Many of the inhabitants of that area switched over to the strategically far more favourably situated regional airport of Sandefjord Lufthavn near Torp, to the south of Oslo. Above all, the low-cost airline Ryanair is seeing to it that stable growth occurs there.

By contrast, low-cost carriers are not so easy to attract to Gardermoen. Oslo airport is organised by the state and is not free to set its own charges. As well as Sterling, a second no-frills operator has commenced operations at Oslo airport as of the beginning of September. With six Boeing 737-300's, Norwegian is offering six daily connections between Oslo and Bergen, Trondheim and Stavanger, the three biggest cities after Norway's capital city, and also two flights a day to Tromsø.

In 2001, 55% of passengers on scheduled flights were business travellers and 45% tourists. The most popular connections continue to be those to Copenhagen, the primary SAS hub, followed by the routes to Stockholm, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Frankfurt. SAS, British Airways and KLM are doing best at the moment.

This year the airport management expects one million fewer passengers than in 2001, but over the next 10 years annual growth of around three to four per cent is forecast. However, this will probably not be as a result of improvements in international scheduled flights but rather in the charter and domestic sectors. Nilsen is currently working on introducing new charter connections to Asia and the Caribbean. He would also like to bring back the direct connection to New York that was cut after 11 September 2001.

He is relying on the good transport infrastructure enjoyed by the airport, notably in the form of six express train services an hour, which make the journey to the centre of Oslo in 19 minutes. There are bus connections to a number of the larger cities of Norway, while a new road link also connects the airport to the motorway network.

Passenger capacity is to be boosted within a few years from its present 17 million to 25 million with the building of a second terminal. The tunnel linking the two terminals has already been built.

Cargo is another area that the airport management would like to grow. Cargo business at Oslo airport is centred on fresh salmon flown to Japan on planes like the DC-10. The North American market has taken a dive, but the airport manager sees further possible markets for this typically Norwegian product, for example, several countries in the Far East. But according to Nilsen, it will take another ten years for companies to settle down in a business park around the airport. The advantages of 24-hour operations have apparently not yet spread around.

The biggest problem faced by the airport at the moment is the stringent environmental regulations and, related to this, the difficult weather conditions that prevail in the interior of the country. "I don't know of any other airport that has such stringent restrictions to contend with,” says Nic. Nilsen. "All the partners here at the airport have to work together extremely closely to reduce the consumption of chemicals, and as a result there is frequently a conflict with the necessary aviation safety measures.”

In contrast to the mild climate on the coast, Oslo airport, being inland, is exposed to fog, snow, low temperatures and icing, weather factors which, according to Nilsen, make operations "extremely challenging”.

The airport is also close to two rivers and lies on top of an underground water reservoir. Consequently, care must be taken during de-icing to avoid using too much glycol. In an ingenious system, the chemical material used is mixed with water according to the weather and temperature conditions and then collected up again as required with the aid of a technically sophisticated system.

The climate requires chemicals to be used on the runways 80 days a year, while de-icing takes place on 190 days a year. Violations of the environmental regulations cost the airport dearly. Thus in 1999 it was fined a million kroner (Euro 135,000).

Traffic controller Alf Haugland also finds the ecological restrictions unfair. The airport, he argues, had been a military airfield for many years, producing contamination that bore no comparison to that produced by the present airport. Old oil tanks with 30,000 litres had been found, which had escaped notice before.

The pressure from the politicians is getting steadily stronger. "It is no longer a fair contest,” he says. Initially, a number of politicians had been actively in favour of the present location of the airport as a means of economically promoting the Gardermoen region, and now the airport has been built in Gardermoen, despite the concerns of aviation experts over its strategically unfavourable situation. But when the population protested vehemently against the aircraft noise and the press unilaterally took up their cause, the politicians turned on the airport management.

When the airport was based in Fornebu, 70,000 people were affected by aircraft noise, compared with the present 3,000. "Yet these 3,000 people shout all the louder even though there is less night-time air traffic than ten years ago,” so Haugland believes.

Not many airports would manage with so few chemicals in the face of such difficult weather conditions. Another problem, as far as the traffic controller is concerned, is the extra distance that the politicians have imposed on aircraft approaching and departing the airport, which are not allowed to turn until they reach an altitude of 5,000ft (1,525m). This restriction was imposed for planning reasons, so as to have better cards when it comes to implementing future schools and residential areas. The present procedures are costing millions of kroner and always burdens the same portion of the population with aircraft noise. Alf Haugland hopes that technical arguments will finally win the day in the debates about the airport, "as otherwise we will find it difficult if we are forced at some point to heed government spokesmen who, for example, insist that pilots climb to 20,000ft in the SID, as opposed to the present 5,000ft, before they can turn towards the direction of their destination.”

From page 82 of FLUG REVUE 11/2002

Last updated 1 October 2002

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