Denmark’s largest airport is the latest in mainland Europe to be considering staff cuts as a result of Covid-19.
The news that Copenhagen airport may make up to 650 employees redundant is reported by Reuters, and follows our article last month about the thousands of redundancies at Frankfurt.
The job losses at Copenhagen are far less than at Germany’s largest hub, but they show how airports, not just airlines, are impacted by the pandemic.
Chief executive Thomas Woldbye was quoted as saying, “We have to accept we’re not in a position to retain the number of employees we had in pre-corona times.”
Copenhagen is the hub for the entire Scandinavian region.
Like Lufthansa in Germany we see Copenhagen acting as the long-haul departure point for most services by SAS (the national airline of Denmark, Norway and Sweden).
There was a significant decline in both flights and passenger numbers at Copenhagen in the first half of 2020.
Handling fewer passengers will impact airport revenues because airports earn much more from their concessions (tax/duty-free shopping, hotels, car rental, catering etc) than they did in the past.
Indeed back in 2018 Copenhagen airport unveiled a major retail expansion amounting to a total of 130 shops and restaurants.
