​​New record for air traffic from Stockholm to the US

In three years, the number of passengers flying between Stockholm Arlanda Airport and the United States has grown by almost 60 per cent to more than one million passengers a year. As a result, traffic to the US has increased twice as fast as other international traffic from Arlanda. Now it will grow even further, as SAS today launches its new direct route from Stockholm to Los Angeles. Present at the Los Angeles inauguration in Stockholm today was Rickard Gustafson, CEO at SAS, Mikael Damberg, Swedish Minister for Enterprise and Innovation and Karl Wistrand, CEO at Swedavia.

In 2015, a total of 663,000 passengers flied on any of the intercontinental direct routes between Stockholm Arlanda Airport and the US. If this also includes passengers flying from Arlanda but transferring at airports en route to the US, the figure is 1.1 million passengers a year. With this strong growth, the US is today the most popular country outside Europe to visit from Sweden.

“Air links to the US west coast are important for both tourism and business exchanges between the countries. The route also means increased productivity for companies that work or want to start working in the Swedish-US market. So it is of great value that SAS is now launching a non-stop service to Los Angeles from Stockholm,” says Karl Wistrand, CEO of Swedavia.

Taking a look at what categories of passenger fly between Stockholm and the US, half are Swedes, 41 per cent are US citizens and the rest are other nationalities.

Swedavia is focused on developing Stockholm Arlanda Airport in to Scandinavia’s leading Airport in 2020. Investments are currently under way to make travel easier for transfer passengers, to adapt facilities to larger aircraft models and to move the airport maintenance area, which will make room for a new pier in Terminal 5.