Flight Report : SK 2987 Kristiansand - Copenhagen

I had initially flown into Oslo from London to reach Norway's southern coast. With a 4 hour journey from Oslo's airport to Arendal, I didn't want to make a similar return trip back for my flight out. During my research, I was surprised Kristiansand, my last base in the region, had a direct flight to Copenhagen. On the ot her hand, there are no direct flights to London on any airline. SAS runs a twice daily service on their summer schedule to Copenhagen and charged a very reasonable fare of about NOK 1100 (GBP 80) including taxes and also a checked bag. So this was how I added Denmark to my southern Norway trip. I then redeemed a BA flight back to London from Copenhagen with my avios. Kristiansand has a small airport about half an hour outside of the city by bus. Route 35 departs from the main bus station next to the waterfront hourly, and costs the same as any other city service. It's just a normal city bus with no luggage racks but the ride was comfortable enough. The bus passed a nice beach and looped around the end of the runway, pulling into the terminal right on time. This is a fairly small airport with a few check-in counters on the left and the arrivals baggage carousel on the right in the open. Scanning the departures and arrivals board, there isn't too much happening here. SAS charges for seat selection during online check-in and I wanted their system to allocate one for free. However, I had encountered errors online the day before, which kept spitting out an error, so I had to go straight to a kiosk to try again. This time it magically worked and I was allocated a window seat. However, I still needed to go to a counter to drop my bag off. With the bag sent away, I then moved to security with over an hour to go before departure. Being a small airport, only one lane was open, resulting in a bit of a wait as there were 2 flights departing around this time. The holding pen had a lot of seating, including proper tables and chairs despite just 2 places to get food, 1 of which was a convenience store selling simple stuff such as hot dogs. With the Oslo flight boarding, I turned my attention to where my gate was. That's when I discovered this initial holding pen isn't the right place. Despite Denmark and Norway being in the Schengen area, I actually had to exit this pen through the one-way doors into the international area. I didn't need to get stamped out, but I emerged into a massive duty-free zone. This part of the terminal looked nicer with fancier chairs and decor. We were all waiting for the incoming flight to arrive, so I did a walk around to pass the time, noticing a sign promoting this new route to Copenhagen. This airport doesn't have any jet bridges but I love boarding from the tarmac, and it was a beautiful day to do so. Today's short flight is flown on an ATR, my 2nd on this aircraft type this year. While the plane had the typical SAS livery, I noticed a logo for Braathens Regional Airways, the regional airline contracted to fly this route. This ATR has quite good legroom and despite being behind the wing, I still had a good view of the outside. As we waited to depart, I browsed the in-flight literature and paid-for menu. It's a short flight and I had a hot dog in the terminal already, so I was only curious about the prices. After the crew announcement that reminded me they just switched from Star Alliance and Skyteam, the cockpit announcement followed noting we're delayed to depart from the stand due to the manual loadsheet. We left the stand at 3:06pm, just slightly behind schedule, and taxied down the lone runway, where we looped around to take off towards the south at 3:11pm. I love small airports! With a left window seat, I wasn't able to score a Kristiansand city view on departure, but there are still plenty of beautiful islands and coastline to see. The crew sprang into action offering complimentary coffee and tea, and it only took about 15 minutes to reach the Danish coast. Not even an hour after take-off, we were descending into Copenhagen. The weather was wonderful throughout the journey and with a left window, I could spot the city in the distance on final approach. We touched down at 4:14pm. Since we were a bit delayed from our original arrival time of 3:50pm, the crew made an announcement asking us to let passengers with tight connections get off first as we pulled into a remote stand. The bus went quite a long way around the airport but at least we exited at a convenient spot near the baggage claim. At the carousel, the signs were quite good at showing the bag delivery status so I had some time to explore the duty-free. Exiting into the arrivals hall, I looked for the train station, which is part of the terminal with different machines for regular trains and those going to Sweden. With my hotel in Orestad, it's only a quick 2 stop journey on the regional trains. The fare is a 2-zone ticket. For the city centre, it would be a 3-zone ticket and you need to look for the Metro instead. This was a pleasant short ATR flight on SAS with beautiful scenery from start to finish. Despite having a checked bag and arriving on a stand, I made it out to the train station within half an hour, a very good feat!