Originally Posted by
copperred
The longstanding obsession of European airlines has been to have hubs in the most central area of the the continent. LH has won that by far. BA has nothing akin to it, but MAD is at least actually part of the EU. LIS is on the periphery, unless you can use it to effect. CPH is pretty great for proximity, hasn't dumped the low cost carriers off on secondary airports, and northern Germany's population centers so close. Once Fehmarn Belt is completed, CPH would be even closer.
MAD is a 4+ hour flight from ARN, I can be 2/3 of the way to Nova Scotia by the time I land there. I do like it as an airport and its great for going places like EZE/LIM but MAD and LIS aren't realistic hubs for anything coming out of Scandinavia as the flight time is on the verge needing something better than intra-EU shorthaul. Ignoring the fact that Iberia Express has seats in Business Class that don't recline.
I don't see people in Northn Germany taking the car or train to CPH for onwards flight connections, not even if they live in Rostock as HAM is half the distance. CPH not having weeded out the Ryanairs of the world to secondary airports is a miss imho. The same goes for AMS, Holland build a second airport dedicated to leisure and LLC traffic of offload AMS as a business airport but can't get out of its own way to open it and move out the LLCs.