FLUG REVUE June 2006: Helsinki is good stop to Asia

June 2006

HELSINKI-VANTAA – THE ROUTE TO ASIA

By Dierk Wünsche

In an interview with FLUG REVUE, Matti Koskivaara, chief airport planner at Finavia, the reorganised and today highly profitable successor to the former aviation authority CAA, describes Helsinki's Vantaa airport as optimally positioned for long-haul flights between East and West compared with its Scandinavian capital city rivals. “Oslo-Gardermoen, Stockholm-Arlanda and Copenhagen may handle larger numbers of passengers – all three of them are SAS hubs – but Vantaa offers customers much higher frequencies in the direction of the Far East than the airports of Oslo and Stockholm. Especially as regards traffic to and from Asia, Helsinki stands up well in comparison with Copenhagen. With this offering, Helsinki is today the natural transit airport for passengers from the EU states seeking to get to the Far East quickly.”

Flying times for distant destinations both to the east and to the west are short compared with other European hubs. Thus, for example, a flight to Peking takes only seven and a half hours, while New York can be reached in eight and a half hours. The growing Asian business metropolises, such as Bangkok, Hong Kong, Osaka, Shanghai, Singapore and Tokyo, in particular are close to the north European gateway to Asia in terms of flying time. The same applies to flights from Asia to Europe. With around 50 European destinations, including other hubs such as Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Vienna, Madrid and Zurich, Helsinki offers passengers a wide range of transit possibilities to the various European airline networks. 22 daily connections are offered within Finland itself.

But above all, the airport has a strong home airline in Finnair, which was founded in 1923. This airline alone transported a record volume of 8.5 million passengers in 2005, up by 4.5 percent compared with 2004. 50 scheduled and 60 charter destinations can be reached from Helsinki. Around 1,000 weekly scheduled flights are offered to destinations in Europe, Asia and the USA. On average, 600 departures and arrivals are handled each day.

“Until the 1980s Helsinki Vantaa was solely a destination airport,” says Matti Koskivaara. “Since then a major transformation has taken place, as one can tell from the expansion measures of recent years. Thus, for example, in 1994 work began on construction of the new hub terminal, which merged the former national and international terminals into a single terminal building. Commissioned in October 1996, it raised passenger handling capacity to a maximum of twelve million passengers per year. The ten million threshold was already reached in the year 2000. A four percent drop was then sustained in 2002 as a result of the terrorist attacks in the USA and the SARS crisis in Asia.”

With 11,130,589 passengers in 2005 (up 3.7 percent on the previous year), Vantaa was the undisputed number one airport in Finland. Asian traffic grew particularly strongly, by 22 percent. Again, the proportion of passengers transiting the airport rose by ten percent. On the other hand, domestic traffic remains sluggish. Scheduled carriers and charter airlines proportionately account for equal volumes of traffic. The low-cost airlines are also represented in Vantaa, for example Germanwings, Air Berlin and, since the end of March, Sterling. When it comes to takeoff and landing charges, however, all airlines pay the same rate, regardless of whether they are no-frills airlines, charter airlines or scheduled carriers.

The airport's passenger catchment area extends for 300km and includes the capital city Helsinki, with a population of 551,000, and the neighbouring cities of Espoo (210,000 inhabitants) and Vantaa (170,600). Together they constitute the rapidly growing Helsinki region, in which one-sixth of Finland's population (which totals around 5.2 million) is concentrated. Of all the passengers who live in Finland, some 80 percent currently use Helsinki as their point of departure for foreign destinations.

At the same time, the direct passenger catchment area of Helsinki Vantaa airport also extends to St. Petersburg in Russia and Tallin in Estonia, both of which can be accessed by both air and sea.

By 2015 the airport plans to grow to 16 million passengers. “The destinations we would like to add include, as well as the important Asia market, other destinations in North America, Russia and India,” Matti Koskivaara explains. “India in particular is an economically booming market. The cargo area is growing with the hub traffic, although Finland itself is not a major import market for air cargo. The emphasis is more on exports. Less than three kilometres away from the airport a DHL logistics centre with a road link to the airport apron is currently under construction. Other cargo service providers represented here include TNT Express, UPS and of course Finnair Cargo.”

Recent years have seen extensive expansion measures at the airport, both landside and airside, to handle the growing numbers of passengers and raise the overall standard of comfort in handling. 21 million euro has been invested in this. In the international part of the terminal, a new section which has the effect of trebling the handling area at the gates was commissioned towards the end of 2004. One in three passengers in Vantaa are already using this new terminal area, whose construction was necessary to handle the rapidly rising Asian traffic and the resulting need for connecting flights.

The expansion of the terminal not only increases passenger comfort in two new lounges, but it also saves them time. 20 new passport control desks are speeding up passport control, while three extra security gates are cutting the transit time to connecting flights significantly. All flights are handled in adjacent terminal areas. The shortest transfer time between long-haul flights and flights to Europe is 35 minutes, between international and national flights it is 30 to 40 minutes and between national flights 20 minutes. Vantaa has a reputation for punctuality.

On the airside too, the airport has had to undergo considerable expansion. Thus, at the end of 2002 the Finns announced the construction of a third, 3,000 metre runway, which was commissioned only a year later. Maximum runway capacity is currently 76 flight movements per hour. On weekdays, between 550 and 600 flight movements are handled every day, while at weekends this drops to around 400 per day. Due to the pressure on the airport, all flights, even General Aviation and air taxi flights, have needed a slot in Vantaa since mid-April.

The next milestone in terms of passenger growth will be 16 million passengers per year. To this end a number of further expansion measures are planned. In addition to a long-term complete solution for the baggage handling systems in the terminal, another measure planned by the airport developers is the expansion of the domestic and non-Schengen areas (by 2007). Other measures include the construction of an airport hotel (2007) and a railway link with two stations in the direction of the city centre (2010). On top of this, the space available for parked aircraft on the apron will rise from the present 54 spaces to around 74 already this summer, while a new anti-icing ramp with capacity for six aircraft is also under construction. Planning of several new aircraft maintenance hangars on the airport grounds is at an advanced stage. Again, the cargo handling area of the airport is to be significantly expanded by 2008.

In the long-term, Matti Koskivaara is already planning the construction of a satellite terminal on the ground between two parallel runways 1,350m apart between 2015 and 2030. This new building will be connected to the existing terminal by a road tunnel and a people mover system. The result of this could be to expand passenger handling capacity to 20 to 22 million passengers per year. Finavia has already reserved the necessary land in anticipation of these projects.

From page 70 of FLUG REVUE 6/2006

Last updated 10 May 2006

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