newstodate.aero
Aug 11, 2015 (newstodate): Ground handling at Iceland's Keflavik Airport remains dominated by the single largest player and national carrier, Icelandair - but the market is changing.
As traffic is increasing significantly over the recent years, the airport's second handling provider Airport Associates is seeing its share of the market growing as well.
In 2013 Icelandair still accounted for 80 percent of the handling market, but this has dropped to about 73 percent in 2015 as new carriers are increasingly adding traffic at Keflavik Airport.
-New carriers may prefer handling by a neutral partner, rather than the national carrier's handling company, and we are definitely seeing our business growing in 2015, says Sigthor Skulason, Airport Associates managing director.
-With a rather large airline customer portfolio from the preceding years, we have managed to add Luxair and Wizz Air as new customers in 2015, while on the other hand Primera Air has been lost to us.
-Most of the airlines already operating here have increased frequencies during this summer, and especially easyJet and WOW Air are growing significantly. On the other hand we have seen other carriers pulling out, at least for the time being, such as Helvetic, Corendon, Thomas Cook and Flybe.
-The increase in our business has called for major investments in 2015 in equipment as well as in staff that has grown from some 250 in 2014 to now well over 300. And if the positive trend continues we will need to invest further in both equipment and staff in the coming year.
-Besides passenger and aircraft handling we are also handling air cargo, primarily generated by Bluebird Cargo, but also by Cargo Express that manages the cargo capacity on WOW Air aircraft, and Delta that is carrying large volumes of seafood from Iceland to the US market.
-It remains a challenge to translate turnover into revenues due to low rates and high costs, but we are doing quite well and growing continuously, says Mr Skulason.
As traffic is increasing significantly over the recent years, the airport's second handling provider Airport Associates is seeing its share of the market growing as well.
In 2013 Icelandair still accounted for 80 percent of the handling market, but this has dropped to about 73 percent in 2015 as new carriers are increasingly adding traffic at Keflavik Airport.
-New carriers may prefer handling by a neutral partner, rather than the national carrier's handling company, and we are definitely seeing our business growing in 2015, says Sigthor Skulason, Airport Associates managing director.
-With a rather large airline customer portfolio from the preceding years, we have managed to add Luxair and Wizz Air as new customers in 2015, while on the other hand Primera Air has been lost to us.
-Most of the airlines already operating here have increased frequencies during this summer, and especially easyJet and WOW Air are growing significantly. On the other hand we have seen other carriers pulling out, at least for the time being, such as Helvetic, Corendon, Thomas Cook and Flybe.
-The increase in our business has called for major investments in 2015 in equipment as well as in staff that has grown from some 250 in 2014 to now well over 300. And if the positive trend continues we will need to invest further in both equipment and staff in the coming year.
-Besides passenger and aircraft handling we are also handling air cargo, primarily generated by Bluebird Cargo, but also by Cargo Express that manages the cargo capacity on WOW Air aircraft, and Delta that is carrying large volumes of seafood from Iceland to the US market.
-It remains a challenge to translate turnover into revenues due to low rates and high costs, but we are doing quite well and growing continuously, says Mr Skulason.