Departure
95%
vs 95%
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Sumburgh Airport is the main gateway to the Shetland Islands, sitting on the wind-scoured southern tip of the Mainland close to Sumburgh Head, some 20 miles south of Lerwick. Operated by Highlands and Islands Airports Limited and served by Loganair, it combines scheduled passenger services with a significant role as a helicopter base for North Sea oil and gas support and search-and-rescue operations. Its history stretches back to 1936, and it remains one of the more distinctive airfields in the UK, not least for the public road that crosses one of its runways.
Sumburgh Airport is the principal air link for the Shetland Islands, located in the parish of Dunrossness on the southern tip of the Shetland Mainland. It is owned and operated by Highlands and Islands Airports Limited (HIAL) and is the base for Loganair's scheduled services to the islands. Beyond scheduled passenger traffic, the airport is a major helicopter operating base, hosting the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (His Majesty's Coastguard), Bristow Helicopters and Babcock Mission Critical Services Offshore, which run search-and-rescue and North Sea crew-change flights. For a visiting simulator pilot, Sumburgh offers a genuinely unusual approach environment, with cliffs, a lighthouse headland and a level crossing across the runway.
The airport lies at the extreme southern end of the Shetland Mainland, close to Sumburgh Head, roughly 20 miles (31 km) south of Lerwick. It provides an approach control and tower service, with radar approach available. The western end of runway 09/27 crosses the A970, the main road linking Sumburgh to the rest of the Shetland Mainland, and this level crossing is controlled by barriers that close whenever an aircraft is taking off or landing.
Sumburgh has two paved runways. Runway 09/27 is 4,516 ft (runway 09) and 4,583 ft (runway 27) long, hard-surfaced, lit, and equipped with an ILS. Runway 15/33 is 4,041 ft (runway 15) and 4,059 ft (runway 33) long, hard-surfaced and lit, without an ILS. Field elevation is 13 ft.
Sumburgh provides an approach radar service on 131.3 MHz, an ATIS on 125.85 MHz, and a tower frequency of 118.25 MHz. The airport is equipped with an ILS, serving runway 09/27, for instrument approaches in the frequent low cloud and fog that affect this exposed southern tip of Shetland.
Pilots should be aware that the A970 road crosses the western end of runway 09/27 at a level crossing, with barriers closed to road traffic whenever an aircraft is landing or taking off, a factor that shapes ground operations at the field. Specific circuit heights and joining instructions are not detailed in the material available, but pilots should expect a tower and approach radar service to sequence traffic given the mix of scheduled airline and helicopter operations.
Sumburgh Head, with its lighthouse on the cliffs immediately south of the airfield, is the dominant visual landmark for pilots approaching from the sea, and the exposed, low-lying links terrain on which the airport sits is bounded by shoreline on more than one side. The A970 road and its level crossing across the western end of runway 09/27 are a further useful reference for locating the runway threshold. The Jarlshof archaeological site, with remains spanning some 4,500 years, lies within sight of the airport and can serve as an additional ground reference for visual navigation in the area.
Sumburgh Links was surveyed and its grass strips laid out by Captain E. E. Fresson of Highland Airways in 1936, and the airfield opened on 3 June that year with an inaugural flight from Aberdeen (Kintore) flown in a De Havilland Dragon Rapide, G-ACPN, by Fresson himself. It was among the first airfields fitted with RDF (radio direction finding) facilities, a response to the frequent low cloud and fog in the area and the proximity of Sumburgh Head. Fresson had earlier demonstrated to the Navy at Hatston in Orkney that hard runways were essential to maintain all-round winter landing facilities, a lesson taken up by the RAF. The former RAF Sumburgh airfield had three runways, two of which, subsequently extended, remain in use today; the longest was originally 800 yards and the shortest ran for 600 yards from shoreline to shoreline. During the Second World War, No. 404 Squadron flew Beaufighter Mark VI and X aircraft from Sumburgh on coastal raids against Axis shipping off Norway and in the North Sea. Ownership of the airport passed from the UK Civil Aviation Authority to the Secretary of State for Scotland on 1 April 1995, and subsequently to the Scottish Ministers, with the airport now sponsored by Transport Scotland.
Sumburgh remains the main airport for Shetland, owned and managed by Highlands and Islands Airports Limited and served by Loganair, which operates scheduled routes to Aberdeen, Belfast City, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, Kirkwall and Manchester, along with seasonal services to Bergen, Dundee and London Heathrow. Alongside scheduled passenger flying, the airport is an important helicopter base, hosting His Majesty's Coastguard, Bristow Helicopters and Babcock Mission Critical Services Offshore for search-and-rescue and North Sea crew-change operations, and it retains an unusually long 1,785 ft helicopter runway rather than a conventional helipad.
