Geiteryggen Airport

Historie

Skien Airport, Geiteryggen is a regional airport located at Geiteryggen, 5.5km southwest of the city center of Skien, Norway. Owned by Skien Municipality, it was last served by Widerøe with daily flights to Bergen. The runway is 1416x and numbered 01–19. The airport had 33,080 passengers in 2014 and has Grenland and the southern part of Telemark as its catchment area.The airport was built with a 650m gravel runway in 1952. Fjellfly was the first airline based at the airport, which from 1963 to 1972 flew scheduled services to Oslo. An extension of the runway to 1050m was carried out in 1970. Norving had a base at Geiteryggen from 1976, which was taken over by Norsk Air in 1988. A major upgrade, including expanding the runway to the current length and building the current terminal, took place in the mid-1980s. Norsk Air withdrew in 1993, resulting in several airlines flying from the airport; Coast Aero Center, Teddy Air, Coast Air, Air Stord and Sun Air of Scandinavia all operated various services during the late 1980s and 1990s. The airport closed in 2002, but was reopened in 2004 when Vildanden was established. The gradually introduced four domestic and international services before folding in 2011.