Skånetrafiken and Öresundståg trains [closed]

This is a really important question for me. This is about a crucial part in my upcoming trip.

I'm going to Helsingborg in Skåne (Scania), Sweden in the start of June. I'm travelling by airplane from Helsinki to Copenhagen and then continuing by Öresundståg from Copenhagen airport to Helsingborg, and back the same way.

What I'm worried about here is getting back. My flight back to Helsinki leaves Copenhagen airport at 14:45. I should be at the airport by around 12:45 to 13:15 at the latest. If I don't reach the airport in time I'll miss my flight, and I have to work the very next day and have other plans here in Finland.

I have reserved an Öresundståg train, operated by Skånetrafiken, at 09:11 in the morning, and to back it up, a NettBuss bus at 10:00 in the morning.

What I'm worried about here is that Skånetrafiken has received pretty much constant negative critic on the Internet this whole year. People are complaining about delayed and cancelled trains and buses. Pretty much every review I have seen of Skånetrafiken has been almost unanimously negative.

I have plenty of time to catch my flight, should the train depart on schedule. But what if it shouldn't? I can allow for delays up to two hours (which is quite a lot, seeing as people have been complaining about 15 minute delays), but if the delay is more than that or worse, if the whole train is cancelled, I'm pretty much screwed. Even if I can take another train to Copenhagen airport, I'll miss my flight and have to look for another, which I'm not guaranteed I'll find.

Note that this is no longer about the ID / border controls. I understand these should be a piece of cake.

This is about the trains themselves. The critic I have found is that the trains have been delayed or cancelled because of electricity failures, collisions and so on. I have no control over these things.

So to get away with all this ranting, and get to the actual point, how likely is the train from Helsingborg to Copenhagen airport going to be on time, or at least available and not cancelled? I have been pretty depressed by all this negative feedback about Skånetrafiken I've found on the Internet.

Best Answer

From Helsingborg you're actually pretty well situated.

If your scheduled train happens to be canceled, you can hop on one of the frequent ferries to Helsingør and take a train on the Danish side instead. These trains are part of the Øresundståg system too, but the service on the Danish side is a lot more frequent, so even two cancellations in sequence would delay you only 40 minutes.

Furthermore, in case of trouble developing close to the airport, you will be in a better position if the train dumps you out in central Copenhagen (with metro and bus connections going to the airport too) than if the Swedish-side train is terminated short in Malmö.

Also, you already have an extreme amount of buffer time in your plan. The 09.11 train you're planning to catch is scheduled to arrive at the airport four and a half hours before your flight departs. For a Schengen-internal flight in the middle of the day, I would not worry about getting to the airport more than an hour in advance.

Really, with that much landside buffer in your schedule, the more relevant risk would be that the flight itself ends up cancelled, say, for mechanical reasons.