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Skavsta allowed to triple passenger numbers

Stockholm Skavsta Airport has been given permission to increase the number of passengers it carries to 6 million per year, up from 1.7 million in 2006, as part of a major expansion programme.

Published: 15 March 2007 17:43 CET

The airport has been granted the permission by environmental regulators, the airport’s Spanish owner Abertis Infraestructuras announced on Thursday.

Skavsta’s expansion would take it past Gothenburg Landvetter and Malmö Sturup to become Sweden’s second biggest airport, based on current passenger numbers. Only Stockholm Arlanda Airport currently carries more passengers, with over 16 million people travelling through the airport annually.

“This fits very well into our master-plan for the airport,” said Dot Gade Kulovuori, managing director of the airport, to The Local.

Under the terms of the permit, the airport has undertaken to investigate flight paths from the perspective of emissions, noise and safety considerations.

The airport, 100 kilometres south of the Swedish capital, is popular with low cost airlines and serves as Ryanair’s main Stockholm base. The Irish airline is currently in negotiations to base a further two planes there.

Winter charter routes to Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey and Majorca were added last year, with services to Thailand and Tunis due to start this year.

Plans for a new rail link are awaiting government approval. The link, part of a new rail service for eastern Sweden, could be finished as early as 2013. A rail line would reduce travelling times from the capital to less than 40 minutes, compared to the current 80 minutes by bus.

UPDATE: Ryanair passenger jet makes emergency landing in Berlin over 'fake bomb threat'

A Ryanair flight making an emergency landing

The flight from Dublin to Krakow made the unexpected diversion after a reported bomb threat, German newspaper Bild Zeitung said.

“We were notified by the Krakow airport that an airport employee received a phone call saying an explosive device had been planted on the plane,” said regional police spokesman, Sebastian Glen.

“German police checked and there was no device, no bomb threat at all. So we know this was a false alarm,” he told AFP on Monday.

“The perpetrator has not been detained, but we are doing everything possible to establish their identity,” Glen added, saying the person faces eight years in prison.

With 160 people on board, the flight arrived at the Berlin Brandenburg airport shortly after 8 pm Sunday, remaining on the tarmac into early Monday morning.

A Berlin police spokesperson said that officers had completed their security checks “without any danger being detected”.

“The passengers will resume their journey to Poland on board a spare aeroplane,” she told AFP, without giving more precise details for the alert.

The flight was emptied with the baggage also searched and checked with sniffer dogs, German media reported.

The passengers were not able to continue their journey until early Monday morning shortly before 4:00 am. The federal police had previously classified the situation as harmless. The Brandenburg police are now investigating the case.

Police said that officers had completed their security checks “without any danger being detected”.

“The Ryanair plane that made an emergency landed reported an air emergency and was therefore immediately given a landing permit at BER,” airport spokesman Jan-Peter Haack told Bild.

“The aircraft is currently in a safe position,” a spokeswoman for the police told the newspaper.

The incident comes a week after a Ryanair flight was forced to divert to Belarus, with a passenger — a dissident journalist — arrested on arrival.

And in July last year, another Ryanair plane from Dublin to Krakow was forced to make an emergency landing in London after a false bomb threat.

READ ALSO: Germany summons Belarus envoy over forced Ryanair landing

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