Copenhagen Airport

Copenhagen Airport, Kastrup is the main international airport serving Copenhagen, Denmark and the Oresund Region. It is located on the island of Amager, only 8 kilometers south of Copenhagen city centre, and 24 kilometers west of Malmö city centre on the other side of the Oresund Bridge. It is the largest airport in the Nordic countries, and one of the oldest international airports in Europe.

The airport is the main hub out of three used by Scandinavian Airlines and is also a hub for Cimber Sterling, Thomas Cook Airlines Scandinavia, Norwegian Air Shuttle and for transavia.com. Copenhagen Airport serves nearly 60,000 passengers per day. 19.7 million passengers passed through the facility in 2009, making it the busiest airport in the Nordic countries, with a maximum capacity of 83 loadings/hour and with room for 108 airplanes. It is owned by Københavns Lufthavne, which also operates Roskilde Airport. The airport employs 1700 staff (excluding shops, restaurants etc.).

Copenhagen Airport was originally called Kastrup Airport, since it is located in the small town of Kastrup, now a part of the Tårnby municipality. The formal name of the airport is still Copenhagen Airport, Kastrup, to distinguish it from Roskilde Airport, which formally is called Copenhagen Airport, Roskilde. Locally it's still known as just Kastrup among people. The opening of service on Kastrup was on 20th of April 1925 and it had a grass runway. In 1939 it was built by architect Vilhelm Lauritzen the first terminal of the airport and in 1941 the first hard-surface runway was ready to use.

Copenhagen Airport has three terminals and a new one is set to open in 2010. The new terminal, CPH Swift, is intended to be used by low-cost airlines. Terminal 1 is used for all domestic flights. Terminals 2 and 3 handle international flights (both Schengen and non-Schengen) and share a common airside passenger concourse as well as the arrivals section - which houses customs and baggage claim and is physically located in Terminal 3.

The airport can be accessed in various ways:

Rail - the airport's station is located underneath Terminal 3 on the Øresund Railway Line and is served by Øresundstogene, the main way to get into the city centre, and to Helsingør, to Malmö, and other Swedish cities. Danish intercity trains terminate at this station, going to places in Denmark such as Esbjerg, Århus, Frederikshavn and Padborg, where connections are available for trains to Germany. Also, SJ operates X2000 high-speed trains to Stockholm and to Gothenburg.

Metro - Line M2 of the Copenhagen Metro links the airport with the city centre.

Bus - Movia buses 5A, 35, 36 and 96 N and Gråhundbus line 999 all stop at the airport; bus 888, express-bus to Jutland, also stops at the airport. Movia bus 2A stops near the airport. There are long-distance buses to Sweden.

Motorway - the E20 runs right by the airport. The E20 uses the Oresund Bridge to Sweden. The airport has 8,600 parking spaces. Customers can pre-book their parking space online by visiting the Copenhagen Airport website: http://www.cph.dk.

With almost 20 million passengers per year, Copenhagen Airport is the largest airport in the Nordic countries. More about Copenhagen here.