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| Copenhagen to Gatwick: Norwegian’s Chief Commercial Officer Daniel Skjeldam gets a handshake welcome from Andy Flower, Managing Director London Gatwick, just one of a lucky 13 new services beginning at Copenhagen this week split between Norwegian and Cimber Sterling. |
The battle to fill the capacity shortfall as a result of Sterling’s collapse last year goes on. This week 13 new services began at Copenhagen airport split between Cimber Sterling and Norwegian. On nine destinations the airlines were adding capacity to routes that were already being served. The full summary of the new routes and the incumbents is shown below.
| Destination | Carriers (weekly frequencies) – New entrants in bold |
| Alicante | Cimber Sterling (2), Norwegian (3), SAS (3), Transavia (3) |
| Athens | Cimber Sterling (2), SAS (7) |
| Barcelona | Cimber Sterling (3), SAS (7), Spanair (14), Transavia (4) |
| Budapest | Malev (19), Norwegian (3), |
| Edinburgh | bmi (10), Cimber Sterling (3), Norwegian (2) |
| Florence | Cimber Sterling (4) |
| Krakow | Norwegian (2) |
| London Gatwick | Cimber Sterling (11), easyJet (12), Norwegian (12) |
| Naples | Cimber Sterling (3) |
| Palma de Mallorca | Air Berlin (6), Norwegian (2), Spanair (2) |
| Rome Fiumicino | Cimber Sterling (7), SAS (11), Transavia (4) |
| Venice | Cimber Sterling (3), SAS (4) |
| Source: OAG Max Online for w/c 30 March 2009 | |
On Alicante and Barcelona passengers now have a choice of four airlines while on four other routes the number of competitors has increased to three. It seems unlikely that this time next year there will be quite so many carriers on most of these routes.
Malaga route has five competitors
Looking at other routes from Copenhagen this summer reveals that there are several destinations served by at least three airlines in direct competition.
| Number of competitors | Route |
| 5 | Malaga |
| 4 | Alicante, Barcelona, Nice |
| 3 | Aalborg, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Helsinki, London Gatwick, Madrid, Oslo, Palma de Mallorca, Prague, Reykjavik, Rome FCO, Warsaw |
| Source: OAG Max Online for w/c 30 March 2009 | |
Danes wishing to head for Malaga have a choice of five airlines; Cimber Sterling (three flights per week), Norwegian (five flights per week), SAS (four flights per week), Spanair (three flights per week) and Transavia.com (five flights per week). With this amount of low-cost competition on many routes it comes as no surprise that SAS (definitely not a low-cost carrier) is struggling.
To make the full summery complete:
transavia.com has also 3 frequencies to Naples and 2 frequencies to Palma de Mallorca starting this April and 2 frequencies to Athens starting in May.