Queue chaos, congestion and missed flights – in the spring and summer of 2022, the situation at Sweden's airports was tense.
This summer, more travelers are expected – but no similar chaos again.
”We are in a completely different situation than we were in 2022,” says Charlotte Ljunggren at Swedavia.
The state-owned company Swedavia, which is responsible for operating Arlanda and nine other airports in Sweden, is seeing even greater demand for air travel ahead of the summer than last year.
Despite this, there is no risk that kitchen chaos will occur again, says Charlotte Ljunggren, Director of Market and Commercial Development at Swedavia.
”"The queue situation at the security checkpoints primarily at Arlanda stabilized at the end of last summer and remains stable," she says.
”"We have a number of travel-intensive periods behind us – Christmas, New Year, the sports holidays and now Easter – which have gone very well," she continues.
The long queues last year were partly due to an increased number of travelers after two years of pandemic and travel restrictions, and partly to a shortage of security personnel – and difficulties in recruiting new ones to handle the increase.
The combination led to security checks becoming overloaded.
At Arlanda north of Stockholm, where the queues were the largest, travelers periodically had to wait for hours to pass through security and go to their gate, which often resulted in them missing their flights.
Charlotte Ljunggren points out that since last year, Swedavia and its subcontractors have carried out major recruitment efforts throughout the airport system, not least for security checks.
”We are in a completely different situation than we were in 2022,” she says.
Is there a risk of you getting caught in bed?
”"No, that's not our assessment. We have learned from last year and looked at what we can do better. We have intensified our work with our partners and planned for what is to come."”
However, some queues may occur during the summers because that is when we are most likely to travel.
”We won’t make any secret of that, but we are prepared.”
Lena Johansson, regional manager at the security company Avarn Security, which is responsible for manning the security checks at Arlanda, confirms to TT that the situation looks significantly better this year.
”"This year we have a completely different basic staffing and the conditions are significantly better for being able to deliver good staffing during the summer as long as no external unforeseen events negatively affect our staffing," she says in a written comment.
In addition to ensuring staffing, Swedavia has implemented efforts to fully utilize the airports' capacity. For example, Terminal 2 was reopened to travelers from outside the Schengen area in March for the first time since before the pandemic.
In addition, a new security checkpoint will open in Terminal 5 at the beginning of the summer.
Source: DI.SE
