HH Ferry route

The HH Ferry route (About the name: Helsingør - Helsinborg; Helsingør is Danish for Elsinore) is a very old shipping route which connects Elsinore (Helsingør) at Zealand, Denmark and Helsingborg, Scania, Sweden across the northern, and narrowest part of the Øresund. Due to the short distance of less than 3 nautical miles, it is one of the world's busiest international car ferry routes, with around 70 daily departures from each harbour. The route has been used in prehistorical times, the oldest known mentioning in text originates from the German traveller Adam of Bremen in the Eleventh Century. Before 1658 it was a Danish domestic route and only thereafter (as Scania was won by the Swedes) did the route become international. For several centuries has the route been run by Danish shipping lines.

The route is currently served by car ferry shipping line Scandlines and a smaller passenger shipping line known as Sundbusserne ("The Sound Buses"). Scandlines' ferries operate more than 70 daily departures from each port, every 15 minutes for most of the day, and every 12 minutes during the peak summer weeks with an additional ferry. As the distance between Denmark and Sweden here only is around 2.5 nautical miles (approx. 4 km), the crossing time is just 20 minutes. While Sundbusserne, currently (as of January 2015) departs every hour with their only "bus".

Scandlines uses four ferries, MF Tycho Brahe, MS Aurora, MF Hamlet and MF Mercandia IV. The M/F Mercandia VIII is available and used during the annual maintenance of the other ferries and during the July peak weeks. The three first mentioned ferries are sister ships and were tailored for this short route. They use dual command bridges and lack natural prows and sterns (nor starboard and port side) and hence never need to turn. Aurora, Hamlet and Tycho Brahe are also built rather low (above sea level) and very wide. The Mercandia IV and Mercandia VIII sister ships were not built especially for this particular route, being vessels of the so-called Superflex type, and have a single bridge. As the bridge is located in the middle of the ship, they also don't need to turn around to change east/west travel direction. Although Mercandia IV and Mercandia VIII look very different from the other three ferries, all five ferries fit within the same category, which allows fastest possible return time.

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Wikipedia