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One winner of Eurovision 2024 can be revealed already: the airline flying the most to the Continent’s leading cultural event.
Aviation revenue economics expert Oliver Ranson has identified the carriers that are touching down most frequently at Malmö, the Swedish city hosting the song contest, as well as nearby Copenhagen – a short train ride away.
In his analysis, Mr Ranson writes: “Malmö has its own airport but there are not so many flights. In run-up to the grand final Wednesday to 3pm on Saturday there will have been 33 flights into Malmö, against 1,125 into Copenhagen.
“Most Eurovision passengers travelling by air will fly into Copenhagen.
“I evaluated all the arriving flights at both airports from every country participating in Eurovision this year to establish the airlines who are most committed to the contest.
“There are other routes, but I doubt that [SAS Scandinavian Airlines] SK936 arriving from San Francisco or [Air China] CA877 from Beijing will be packed with Eurovision fans.”
The official Eurovision airline, easyJet, reaches only fifth place – enough to earn seven points, under the scoring system adopted for the fiercely contested competition.
Immediately above it is arch-rival Ryanair, winning eight points for helping to deposit people beside the Baltic.
The Lufthansa Group, including the German national airline, Austrian, Brussels Airlines, Eurowings and Swiss is in third place and scores nine.
Second best overall: Norwegian, which has 20 flights coming in from the UK alone. It earns 10 points.
Top place, and douze points, goes to SAS Scandinavian AIrlines – the “home town” airline, which encompasses Sweden, Denmark and Norway.
In sixth and seventh places are two other multi-national groups: Air France-KLM and IAG, owner of British Airways.
Mr Ransom also has praise for the one African airline in the chart: “Down in the diadora league (non-scoring part of the table), honourable mention must go to Ethiopian Airlines, who operate a wide-body.
“Their usual 315-seat 787 operating fifth-freedom from Addis Ababa has been up-gauged to a 321-seat 777 for the Friday and Saturday only.”
The writer predicts the actual Eurovision winner will be Windows95man from Finland.
Read our full Malmö city guide
Source: independent.co.uk
