Norway’s Tromso airport still the busiest in northern Scandinavia, stats show
Scandinavian aviation authorities report a year-on-year increase in passengers at most northern airports in 2018.
Tromsø airport posts a solid rise in passenger traffic by 3% last year. The airport handled more than 2,3 million passengers. Domestic traffic was slightly down, but a significant rise in traffic from abroad of 45% secures the growth, statistics from Avinor shows.
Second in northern Scandinavia is Bodø airport with 1,8 million passengers, down 0,4% from 2017.
Oulu in Finland is the airport where passenger traffic continues to fly higher than at any other airports in the north. Finavia’s statistics tells about an increase of 18% year-on-year. Nearly 1,1 million passengers were flying to and from Oulu in 2018.
Also the three other airports in northern Finland witnessed a jump in traffic with Rovaniemi up 11,2% to 644,144, Ivalo up 15,1% to 242,457 and Kittilä up 9,1% to 354,561 passengers last year.
With that, Kittilä is handling more passengers than Kirkenes airport in Norway which reached 315,915, down 0,7%. Alta airport counted 386,662 passengers, up 1,9%. Fourth busiest airport in northern Scandinavia is Harstad/Narvik with 762,747 passengers, up 1%.
In Sweden, there the railway network is better developed than in the northernmost parts of Norway and Finland, air traffic declined in 2018.
Both Kiruna and Umeå reported a traffic decrease of -2%. Kiruna had 276,516 passengers, while Umeå was just over a million.
Luleå, the regional capital of Norrbotten, had 1,2 million passengers in 2018, according to Swedavia’s statistics.
Related stories from around the North:
Canada: Indigenous Cultural Tourism: How the North is learning from community success in southern Canada, Eye on the Arctic
Finland: Rise in overseas flights harms climate more than driving, report shows, Yle News
Iceland: Arctic tourism in the age of Instagram, Eye on the Arctic special report
Norway: When a town in Arctic Norway transforms into “the world’s northernmost Chinatown”, Cryopolitics Blog
Russia: Russian regional airline cancels only direct Murmansk-Oslo link, The Independent Barents Observer
Sweden: Growing number of Swedes choose train travel over flying to reduce pollution, Radio Sweden
United States: Blog – When the ice melts, what will happen to Arctic tourism?, Cryopolitics blog
