Case study: Copenhagen Airport

Centralised, integrated and streamlined workforce planning for Scandinavia’s busiest airport…

Copenhagen Airport (CPH) is the busiest international airport in Scandinavia, with over 24 million passengers passing through its doors each year. Dubbed the gateway to Northern Europe, CPH is the largest airport in the Nordic region, serving 60 airlines and over 79,000 passengers daily. These numbers are expected to rise as the airport recently started servicing 22 new routes ranging from continental routes such as Groeningen and Yekaterinburg to transatlantic routes such as Boston and Miami.

Behind the scenes, it takes around 2,000 people to keep the airport running smoothly, 24 hours a day. This includes 1,000 staff who clear passengers and their carry-on luggage before they board, maintenance staff who ensure all doors, escalators and elevators are working at all times, and cleaning staff who keep the building immaculate. There’s even a team of bird hunters who prevent avian creatures from doing any damage to planes. The airport building itself has over 100 doors, all with different levels of security and maintenance requirements – adding another layer of complexity to managing the airport’s infrastructure.

CPH has a comprehensive and strategic approach to workforce planning to ensure the facility runs like clockwork. In the last 10 years, it has been named “the most efficient airport in Europe” eight times. To maintain its reputation as one of the world’s best airports, CPH’s operations team examined how data could be actively used to enhance operational forecasting and planning. With that objective in mind, CPH sought a partner to help redefine its workforce planning processes.