ABSTRACT
In this chapter we explore the making of hub airports by focusing on Scandinavia’s largest hub, Copenhagen Airport, through a field study based on interviews with key stakeholders. The chapter shows how the placement of Scandinavian Airlines’ main hub in Copenhagen Airport historically is the result of top-down decision-making of Scandinavian countries and only a little political awareness and understanding of the broader benefits of having a hub at Copenhagen Airport. Within the last two decades, Copenhagen Airport has been challenged regarding its position as a hub as transfer passenger share steadily dwindles. In a place management perspective, we, therefore, argue that a new governance model of airport development that looks beyond the financial and safety aspects of regulating an airport and engages with long-term strategic societal goals, addressing the industry’s externalities and its role in fuelling the climate crisis, needs to be established. Such a model also needs to mobilise actors involved in producing aviation through an active, multi-stakeholder platform. Failing to cooperate across the board, they stress, ultimately affects the ability to capitalise on the unique opportunities that a hub airport has for local, regional and national place making.
