Departure
91%
vs 95% ▼ 4
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Ísafjörður Airport (BIIS/IFJ) serves the town of Ísafjörður in Iceland's Westfjords, tucked deep inside a fjord that makes its approach one of the most demanding in commercial aviation. Opened in 1960, it remains the region's principal air link to Reykjavík and is well known to simulator pilots for the sharp turn required on approach to one of its runway directions.
Ísafjörður Airport lies at the edge of the town of Ísafjörður in the Westfjords region of northwestern Iceland, operated as part of the Icelandic domestic airport network. It is a single-runway field whose fjord-side setting forces a distinctly non-standard approach, and it has become something of a landmark destination for flight simulator enthusiasts thanks to the turn required to line up with the runway. For a VFR pilot it offers a compact but memorable challenge: steep terrain on both sides of the fjord, a short final, and limited options for a conventional straight-in join.
The airport sits within the fjord on which the town of Ísafjörður stands, in the Vestfirdir (Westfjords) region of northwestern Iceland, at coordinates 66.0581N, 23.1353W and an elevation of 7 feet. The surrounding terrain rises steeply on both sides of the fjord, and the field is served by Reykjavik Area Control for en-route traffic.
The airport has a single physical runway, 08/26, aligned roughly east-west, measuring 4,560 feet with a hard surface and runway lighting. There is no ILS.
The airport is served by an aerodrome flight information service, callsign INFO, on 118.8 MHz. Reykjavik Area Control Centre, callsign REYKJAVIK ACC, operates on 119.7 MHz for the surrounding airspace. There is no instrument landing system at the field.
Because the runway lies within a fjord, straight-in approaches are generally not possible for either direction. When landing towards the northeast, pilots must complete a full 180-degree turn shortly before touchdown, a manoeuvre that has made the approach to Ísafjörður internationally known among pilots and is featured as a landing challenge in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. The surrounding high ground on both sides of the fjord requires pilots to fly close to terrain throughout the approach.
The town of Ísafjörður and the enclosing fjord walls are the dominant visual references for locating and joining the field, with the runway running along the shoreline and steep terrain rising immediately to either side.
Planning for the airport began in 1958 and construction of the runway started the same year, with the field originally built to a length of 1,100 metres at a cost of 4.8 million ISK. It opened formally on 2 October 1960, the first aircraft to land being Gljáfaxi, a Douglas DC-3 of Flugfélag Íslands. On 20 March 1982 a Flugleidir Fokker F27 Friendship, registration TL-FLM, suffered a left engine explosion on takeoff from Ísafjörður at around 490 feet; the crew, unable to lower the damaged landing gear, elected to divert some 230 km to Keflavík rather than attempt a landing on the narrow runway at Ísafjörður, and all 25 people on board survived the eventual landing in Keflavík. In 2025 Icelandair announced it might withdraw commercial service to Ísafjörður as its Bombardier Dash 8-200 fleet, kept largely for this route, became unsustainable following the opening of larger airports in Greenland; in April 2026 the Icelandic government agreed to subsidise Icelandair's service to Ísafjörður to secure flights until at least 2030.
Icelandair continues to operate scheduled services between Ísafjörður and Reykjavík, with the route secured by a government subsidy agreement through at least 2030. The airport is part of Iceland's domestic airport network and continues to be known among pilots, including flight simulator users, for its distinctive fjord approach.
