Departure
98%
vs 95% ▲ 2
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Bergen Airport, Flesland (ICAO ENBR, IATA BGO) is Norway's second-busiest airport, serving the city of Bergen from its coastal site in Vestland county. Operated by Avinor, it offers a single very long, ILS-equipped hard runway and handles everything from SAS and Widerøe jet services to heavy North Sea offshore helicopter traffic, making it a notable and demanding destination for the simulator pilot.
Bergen Airport, Flesland is the main international gateway for Bergen, the second-largest city in Norway, and is operated by the state airport company Avinor. It opened in 1955 and has grown into Norway's second-busiest airport, hosting Scandinavian Airlines, Norwegian Air Shuttle and Widerøe alongside a substantial helicopter operation supporting North Sea oil platforms. For a sim pilot the field is of interest both for its single very long instrument runway set against dramatic fjord and mountain terrain, and for the mix of airline jets and offshore helicopter movements that share the airspace.
The airport lies at Flesland within the city and municipality of Bergen, in Vestland county on Norway's west coast. It is a large controlled aerodrome under Avinor management, and as the principal airport for the Bergen region it sits within Norwegian controlled airspace serving both scheduled airline traffic and dense offshore helicopter operations to and from North Sea platforms.
Bergen Flesland has a single physical runway, oriented 17/35, with a hard paved surface lit for night operations. The 17 direction is 8888 feet long and the 35 direction 8891 feet long, and the runway is equipped with an ILS, making it usable in a wide range of weather conditions.
Published frequencies for the field are: APPROACH 121 MHz, ARRIVAL RADAR 125 MHz, ATIS 125.25 MHz, DIRECTOR 118.85 MHz, GROUND 121.9 MHz and TOWER 119.1 MHz. The runway is fitted with an ILS, giving pilots a precision approach aid for the 17/35 runway in poor visibility or low cloud.
The first aircraft to fly in the Bergen area did so in a demonstration on 25 September 1911, and early air services used water aerodromes at Flatøy, Sandviken and later Herdla rather than a land airfield. Norway's first scheduled airline service began in 1920 between Bergen, Haugesund and Stavanger, operating from the Sandviken water aerodrome just north of the city centre. Planning for a proper land airport for Bergen took place through the 1930s, with early studies favouring Flesland but noting that the surrounding topography would limit runway length to under 900 metres; a 1938 municipal committee instead recommended the island site of Herdla. During the German occupation, the Wehrmacht developed Herdla as a military airstrip with two runways, the longer 1,000 metres, after a German bomber had made an emergency landing there. After the war the Civil Aviation Administration continued to favour Herdla, but concerns over its limited scope for expansion and poor transport links to the city, raised by CAA director Einar Bøe and supported by the Bergen-based Minister of Transport and Communications Nils Langhelle, led Parliament to pause the decision. Fresh engineering studies of both Herdla and Flesland in 1950 and 1951 found that extending the Flesland site into a valley to its south would allow for a runway as long as 3,000 metres, and this reassessment paved the way for Flesland's selection. Financing was secured largely through NATO funds, and Bergen Airport, Flesland opened on 2 October 1955. Until the 1980s it was the Norwegian airport used by SAS for intercontinental flights to New York, and until 1999 it was also home to Flesland Air Station of the Norwegian Air Force. New passenger terminals were opened in 1988 and again in August 2017, the latter coinciding with the extension of the Bergen Light Rail to the airport.
Bergen Airport, Flesland remains Norway's second-busiest airport, operated by Avinor, and is a focus city for Scandinavian Airlines (SAS), Bristow Norway and CHC Helikopter Service, and an operating base for Widerøe, with Norwegian Air Shuttle also a major user. The single 17/35 runway handles both fixed-wing airline traffic and a substantial volume of offshore helicopter operations supporting North Sea oil platforms, alongside the busy domestic and international route network centred on the airport.
