Departure
95%
vs 95%
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Vadsø Airport is a small regional field on the Varangerfjorden coast of Finnmark, serving the town of Vadsø with scheduled Widerøe Dash 8 services into Norway's short-runway network. Operated by Avinor from a single hard-surfaced runway, it offers a straightforward but characterful destination for pilots exploring the far north of Norway. Its history stretches back to a 1930s seaplane route and a 1974 opening as part of the last phase of Norway's regional airport programme.
Vadsø Airport sits on the shore of the Varangerfjorden in the far northeast of Norway, serving the town of Vadsø in what is now Troms og Finnmark county. It is a state-owned Avinor field handling scheduled Widerøe Dash 8-100 services to other Finnmark communities and to Tromsø, operated under public service obligation contracts. For a simulator pilot it is a compact, remote northern airfield with a single runway, modest facilities and a strong sense of the Arctic coastal aviation network that Widerøe has served since the 1930s.
The airport lies at Kiby, about 4 kilometres east of Vadsø town centre, on the Varangerfjorden. It is roughly 38 km from Kirkenes and around 69 km from Vardø, both served by their own airports within the same stretch of Finnmark coastline.
Vadsø has a single physical runway, 07/25, a hard-surfaced strip 2,997 feet long. Both ends are lit, and runway 07 is equipped with an ILS approach.
An INFO (AFIS-type) frequency of 120.2 MHz serves Vadsø. Runway 07 is equipped with an ILS approach for instrument arrivals.
The airport lies close to the shoreline of the Varangerfjorden at Kiby, with the town of Vadsø itself providing an obvious landmark about 4 kilometres to the west.
Vadsø's aviation story began with a Widerøe seaplane route established in 1938, flying along the coast south to Trondheim; the service was interrupted by the Second World War and resumed in 1946 under Norwegian Air Lines using Junkers Ju 52 aircraft, with passengers boated out to a designated water landing area. Widerøe took the route back over from 1954, introducing the de Havilland Canada Otter. Through the early 1960s, local operator Varangfly, later renamed Norving, flew seaplane services to Kirkenes and Båtsfjord and proposed Vadsø as a site for a small landing ground for air taxis and ambulances. A county committee recommended Vadsø as one of six airfield locations in 1966, and it was ultimately chosen as one of five initial regional airport sites in northern Troms and Finnmark, the fourth and final stage of Norway's national regional airport programme. The Civil Aviation Administration weighed a site at Fossemyrene against Kiby before settling on Kiby, 4 kilometres east of town. Before the airport opened, an aviation club founded in 1971 flew from a field at Karlebotn, then from the frozen lake of Navarsvannet in winter, before moving to an airfield at Golnes created by levelling a moraine ridge; Norving used Golnes for ambulance and taxi flights from 1972 until Vadsø Airport itself opened. Vadsø Airport opened on 1 August 1974, alongside Sørkjosen, Hammerfest, Mehamn and Berlevåg airports, with a combined control tower and terminal building holding up to 30 people and Widerøe Twin Otters landing four times daily. Norving began a Kirkenes-Vadsø-Båtsfjord service in January 1975, though without permission to carry passengers on the Vadsø-Kirkenes leg. The 1984 introduction of the de Havilland Canada Dash 7 prompted a major upgrade, with a new 350-square-metre terminal and an 11,000-square-foot hangar built, and the airport briefly had its own cafe. Widerøe took over Norving's Båtsfjord route in 1990 and continued flying Twin Otters until the Dash 8 replaced them in 1995. Ownership passed from Vadsø Municipality to the state and the Civil Aviation Administration on 1 January 1997. Mehamn services came under public service obligation from 1 April 1997. A 1999 plan to extend the runway to 1,200 metres was never carried out. Airport security screening was introduced on 1 January 2005, and the navigational aids and runway were upgraded in 2007.
Vadsø Airport is operated by Avinor and continues to handle scheduled Widerøe Dash 8-100 services to other Finnmark communities and to Tromsø under public service obligation contracts. The terminal has capacity for 170 passengers per hour and can handle two Dash 8-100 aircraft simultaneously. The field has been equipped with a SCAT-I satellite-based landing system to support instrument approaches in this remote Arctic coastal setting.
