With the cute ‘lose your heAARt’ slogan, Aarhus Airport is embracing the city’s mission to grow as it prepares to host the prestigious Routes Europe event
When Lotta Sandsgaard walks onto the stage to welcome delegates to Routes Europe 2024 in April she will be celebrating one year in charge at Aarhus, the official airport” of Denmark’s second city.
For most of the attendees at the Aarhus-hosted gathering of the continent’s top airline and airport networkers it will be their first sight of the city. Sandsgaard and the Aarhus team are delighted to be able to showcase the highlights of their destination and bring it out from under the shadow of Danish capital Copenhagen.
“Our mission, given to us by our municipal shareholders, is to take our market. We have been sleeping for a long time, but we are waking up,” said Sandsgaard.
Aarhus is driven to capitalise on a new terminal with plenty of capacity, a 35-minute drive time to the city centre, a catchment area that is the largest in mainland Denmark, and a region that has a strong economy.
Its efforts to grow are already paying off with a 29% spike in traffic in 2023 to 542,000 passengers.
“We are expecting a lot from Routes Europe and are determined to seize the opportunity to grow our airport and increase tourism and traffic to our amazing city,” Sandsgaard explained.
“I anticipate that 99% of the delegates coming to Aarhus will not have been here before, but most will have been to Copenhagen,” said David Surley, Aarhus Airport Senior Director Air Service Development and Marketing.
“Now it is our time to shine as a second city,” he explained, pointing to the good work other regional cities such as Barcelona, Gothenburg, Marseilles and Porto have done to make their destinations more attractive and woo more business away from hubs. Aarhus is determined to be part of a similar story.
A vibrant region
Tourism organisation Visit Aarhus bills the city it represents as “the centre of a modern, active and creative region” with stunning landscapes showing off everything from beaches to hills and woodlands.
“Aarhus is a beautiful and very modern city,” added Surley. “It is easy to walk around, with a young and vibrant population offering a rich cultural life. It has the largest port in Denmark that houses an entirely new urban zone that simply did not exist eight years ago.
“The city has a strong business backbone too with several companies locating their global headquarters in Aarhus. Aarhus University is also a real academic powerhouse here in Denmark,” said Surley. In addition, it is worth noting that Aarhus is Scandinavia’s fifth-largest metropolitan area, a fact that will surprise many.
According to CEO Sandsgaard: “Our mission is to give a good service to the citizens of Aarhus, bringing better connectivity alongside the important goal of becoming strong financially. Our aim is to be a healthy business that can support our future growth.”
The Aarhus business plan has a target of the airport achieving 1.5 million passengers by 2029. It would break even at 1 million passengers, which could occur by 2026 if traffic continues to grow at the pace of the past couple of years.
In 2024, Aarhus is aiming to handle well over 600,000 passengers as a variety of carriers add new service and existing routes grow.
Aarhus has much in common with large cities in other countries that are up against a dominant national hub and can struggle to compete. “We have significant traffic leakage to Copenhagen and also to Hamburg,” said Sandsgaard.
Stopping leakage
Plugging these holes is the task of the Aarhus marketing team Surley leads. “My wish list is to increase our traffic with improved hub connectivity, both southbound and westbound; more low-cost carrier services; leisure and charter airline development; and more niche regional traffic,” he explained.
Scandinavia’s home carrier SAS is a mainstay for Aarhus, with regular feeder services to all three of the Nordic hubs – Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm – with the former just a 30-minute flight away on a route with high frequencies.
On the LCC front, Ryanair is the airport’s largest carrier by passenger volume and its largest for international traffic. “Aarhus was the first airport in Denmark that Ryanair opened. This year it celebrates 25 years of service on the London Stansted–Aarhus route. It is a major success story,” said Surley.
A pleasing new arrival at Aarhus is Scandinavia’s second-largest airline, Norwegian, which will begin service to Alicante, Palma and Malaga from the summer season. “It is a big deal for us to finally see them here,” said Surley.
“We have been in dialogue with Norwegian for eight years and it is great to see them coming to what is the largest unserved Nordic market for them by far,” he said, noting: “These are routes that Danish sun-seekers love and adore, so they make absolute sense for Norwegian as it refocuses its operations on serving Nordic markets,” he noted.
The restructuring underway at SAS is a welcome development for the region’s airports, with the hope that new investors and a new business direction will enable the carrier to flourish and grow once more. “We are expecting a lot of further collaboration with SAS and expect to grow together with them,” said Sandsgaard.
In addition to expanding its network reach in and around Europe, Surley explained that the size of the Aarhus metropolitan area, with its 1.4 million people, means the airport will one day entertain longer-haul routes. “This population size makes us one of the largest un-served points in northern Europe,” he noted.
“The population base here is more than adequate for connections to transatlantic destinations and the Middle East hubs. They are all on our radar,” he said. “We have got a really good story here.”
Dream job
The chance to make a difference for a city like Aarhus, plus a life-long passion for aviation, is what attracted Sandsgaard to the airport. “It is a cliché, but this really is a dream job for me,” she said.
Sandsgaard has good knowledge of the airport as a customer, visiting many times in her own small private aircraft, a Rockwell Commander 114b, which is now based at Aarhus.
Running an airport means her free time is limited but she still manages to fly about 100 to 150 hours a year.
While Sandsgaard has great affection for regional airports, she is under no illusions how tough a challenge it is to make them successful in business terms.
The governance structure of the airport is a big asset in this regard and Aarhus is currently well set. “At Aarhus my board is made up completely of business professionals. It’s a gift to have them to support the management of the airport,” she explained.
