Green routes to the home of Santa Claus

Earlier most of the British Santa Claus flights had to fly point to point routes, which often led them outside Norwegian airspace on their way up to Finland. But international cooperation by Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and the UK has now paved the way for shorter travel routes in Norwegian airspace and on to Finland. At peak times 35 planes are headed in each direction daily, and by cutting 7-800 nautical miles off the trip each way, we are talking about a significant reduction in emissions from this traffic, says Jan Gunnar Pedersen from Avinor's Air Navigation Services. No disruption to air traffic The Santa Claus traffic is high enough in the airspace so that it does not cause delays for ordinary passenger traffic in Norway. Most of the flights take place during the weekend. Avinor has therefore set up shift schedules so that staffing matches the times during the weekend when the traffic is the heaviest. So far there are no indications that we will have problems with this years ordinary Christmas traffic. We are committed to getting people quickly and safely home for Christmas, concludes Pedersen.