Flight RC453 is ready to leave the gate in Copenhagen to fly to its home base on the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic, halfway between Southern Norway and Iceland.
It’s a flight of less than two hours and Atlantic Airways is the flag carrier of these 18 remote islands. Home to 50,000 people and 80,000 sheep, the islands are semi-autonomous and internationally represented by Denmark.
The Copenhagen route is the airline’s milk run, flown up to four times daily in a short peak season comprising just July and August at the height of European summer.
Atlantic Airways is probably Europe’s smallest national jet airline, with a fleet of just two Airbus A319s, one Airbus A320 plus two Agusta Westland 139 helicopters for intra-island traffic and search and rescue missions.
But it uses sophisticated navigation equipment to operate in adverse weather conditions and compete against a much bigger Scandinavian rival, SAS.
Watch: low visibility Cat IIIa landing.
Hans Christian Petersen, the pilot on today’s flight, has a slight problem: As usual in July, Vagar airport, the island’s only airfield, is covered in fog and visibility is down to the just 200m.
To land, Atlantic Airways aircraft need a minimum of 800 meters. Other aircraft need even almost double that but the island carrier, since it took its Airbus jets from 2012, has equipped them with the most sophisticated variant of RNP (Required Navigation Performance) – RNP AR 0.1. The high-end system, used by no other European airline, has served it well.
“We often see these conditions in July, with warm waters of the gulf stream and cooler air producing low visibility,” says Petersen. “Normally the fog lifts enough around mid-day so that we can get in. We give it a try.”
SAS, which has operated competing daily services between Copenhagen and Vagar since March, 2017, has had to cancel flights often because of weather at the destination. The airline’s pilots haven’t had enough training hours yet utilizing the RNP the airport has installed recently, and the Danish aviation authority hasn’t granted permission to SAS to use it.
“Introducing this (technology) in 2012 was really a game changer for us,” says Atlantic Airways chief executive Johanna á Bergi during an interview with AirlineRatings in Vagar. “Our core responsibility is to serve the islands, we will always keep trying getting in and out for every flight even in difficult weather.”
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And surprisingly, Atlantic Airways achieves a punctuality rate in the high 90s percentage-wise, better than many big European carriers operating in sheltered climates.
Flight RC453 is on final approach to Vagar airport, built by the British during the Second World War in a location chosen because it was not visible from ships but one that is especially prone to fog.
“Our GPS on the aircraft is satellite-based, we don’t rely on ground equipment,” explains Petersen. “We have 3D waypoints, this system is brilliant for us, it also helps us to avoid zones of turbulence that we had to fly right through in earlier times.”
The visibility has improved just above the limits and after touchdown, the second half of the runway is still covered in fog. SAS made it in as well today and its new A320neo is parked on the ramp.
The arrival of SAS in Vagar created a significant erosion in fares and led to overcapacity on the route. It has also meant a crammed terminal facility around the mid-day peak as two flights are handled at the same time.
“We lowered our fare by 30 percent when SAS came in, but we have been competitive all the time besides the monopoly-like situation before,” says á Bergi.
Iceland has experienced a tremendous tourism boom resulting in over-tourism and a four-fold rise in visitor numbers between 2010 and 2017 to almost 2.5 million last year.
Many repeat visitors are now seeking a Nordic alternative and find the neighboring Faroe Islands.
“From Iceland, 80 percent of our passengers are tourists,” observes á Bergi.
But the Faroe Islands are also experiencing a boom and 2017 saw the airport for the first time handle more than 300,000 passengers.
The 341,388 passengers represented an increase of almost 17 percent and Atlantic Airways carried 280,000 of them.
The airline is now s focusing on “organic growth” aimed at serving other airports in Western Europe beyond the main Copenhagen run and lesser frequencies to destinations such as to Edinburgh, Bergen, two other Danish cities plus Barcelona.
The first step is to get more codeshare agreements. The airline now has agreements in place with Air France/KLM, Finnair and soon British Airways.
But instead of channeling most of the European traffic via Copenhagen, “we are thinking of flying also to either Paris-CDG, Amsterdam or Hamburg,” says á Bergi.
She says the next step of growth will be a capacity increase when one leased A319 is returned next year and replaced by a new A320neo, meaning 30 seats more in the fleet.
“We could even use the A321neo to Vagar, maybe with a weight penalty of 210 instead of 220 passengers, but that would help us grow with the airport that we have,” she adds, noting “it’s a challenge to be a small airline”.
