Departure
95%
vs 95%
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Notodden Airport is a small municipal aerodrome at Heddal, just outside Notodden in the old Telemark county of Norway, long associated with general aviation and one of the country's most active sailplane sites. It offers a single hard-surfaced runway served by an instrument landing system and flight information service, making it a straightforward but characterful destination for visiting pilots.
Notodden Airport lies at Tuven, in the Heddal area just outside the town of Notodden. It is owned by Notodden Municipality and operated as Notodden Lufthavn AS, and has served since the 1950s primarily as a general aviation field. The airport is particularly notable for its long-standing and extensive sailplane activity, drawing gliding pilots who take advantage of favourable local wind and pressure conditions, alongside a water aerodrome on the adjoining lake.
The airport sits at Heddal in Notodden, in the region formerly known as Telemark county, Norway. A water aerodrome operates alongside the land airfield, using the lake of Heddalsvatnet for take-off and landing by seaplanes.
Notodden has a single hard-surfaced runway, 12/30, lit, with a recorded length of 4,563 feet in the 30 direction and 2,501 feet in the 12 direction. Runway 12 is equipped with an instrument landing system.
Notodden operates an aerodrome flight information service (AFIS), with the station identified as Notodden Information on 118.8 MHz. Runway 12 is served by an ILS approach.
Plans for an airport at Notodden were first raised in 1954 by Reidar Hedwig-Dahl, director of the local tourist office, who met with Ludvig G. Braathen of Braathens SAFE to discuss establishing a gateway airfield to Telemark. The municipalities of Heddal and Notodden agreed financing and ownership terms in April 1955, with Notodden taking a seven-elevenths share and Heddal four-elevenths. Construction, costing 200,000 Norwegian krone and including a 1,000-by-40-metre runway, took seven and a half months, and the airport opened on 11 November 1955. Braathens SAFE began test flights in March 1956 and inaugurated a scheduled seasonal stop on its Oslo-Stavanger route in May that year, but low passenger numbers led to the route's withdrawal after the 1958 season; a further single-season attempt by Thor Solberg in 1959 met the same fate. General aviation activity grew steadily through this period, and by the early 1960s the airfield had become popular with sailplane pilots owing to its favourable wind and pressure conditions, with Oslo Flyklubb basing two gliders at Tuven. A pilot school established by Ronald Stensrud in 1966 closed after a short period. In 1967 the municipality and county jointly funded an extension and asphalting of the runway to 1,400 metres, intended to allow larger aircraft such as the Fokker F-27 and Convair CV-440 to use the field and to support hoped-for international charter traffic to nearby mountain resorts; this ambition was never realised, and the extended runway's opening was delayed by flooding shortly before its planned 1968 unveiling. A later dispute arose between the municipality and a consulting engineering firm over the cost of additional earthworks required during this construction. Subsequent scheduled service attempts included Partnair flights to Oslo and Stavanger in 1985, terminated within a year, and services by Air Team from 1998, later replaced by Bergen Air Transport flights to Bergen from 2000.
Notodden today is used mainly for general aviation, with continuing extensive sailplane activity that reflects the site's long gliding heritage. A water aerodrome operates in conjunction with the land airfield, using the adjacent lake of Heddalsvatnet for seaplane operations.
