Vágar Airport

The airport was built by British Royal Engineers during World War II on the island of Vágar. The site was chosen mainly because it was hard to see from the surrounding waters and any potential German warship. The first aeroplane landed here in Autumn 1942. (See British occupation of the Faroe Islands in World War II). British engineers had similarly first built Reykjavík Airport in Iceland in 1940, then known as RAF Reykjavik, following the British Occupation of Iceland.

After the war, Vágar airfield was abandoned and left unused until 1963 when it was reopened as a civilian airport at the initiative of two Sørvágur residents, Hugo Fjørðoy and Lars Larsen. The two worked with the Icelandic airline Icelandair, which began the scheduled flights to Bergen, Copenhagen and Glasgow using a Douglas DC-3 aircraft. In 1964 a separate airline, Faroe Airways, operated flights, first using chartered aircraft but in 1965 they bought a DC-3 from the Swedish airline Linjeflyg.[3] The company ceased operating on 28 September 1967. In 1971, Icelandair was operating Boeing 727-100 jetliners into the airport with weekly nonstop service to Glasgow and Reykjavik.[4] In 1988, Atlantic Airways was flying British Aerospace BAe 146-200 jet service nonstop to Copenhagen.[5] Until 2004 Maersk Air also operated flights into the airport. Maersk Air flew Boeing 737-500 jetliners into the airport with service to Copenhagen.[6][7]

Until 2002 travel from the airport to most locations in the Faroe Islands including the capital Tórshavn required a car ferry, but since the Vágatunnilin, a tolled road tunnel, was opened, travel has been made much easier by giving direct road access to the neighbouring island of Streymoy, where Tórshavn is located.

A new airport terminal opened on 17 June 2014 with increased passenger capacity.[8]

The runway was extended from 1,250 m (4,100 ft) to 1,799 m (5,902 ft) in 2011, allowing a greater variety of aircraft types to be used, and further-away destinations to be introduced.[9] Construction work started in May 2010, and on 3 December 2011, the extended runway was opened and put into use for the first time.[10] Previously, jet aircraft with short airfield performance such as the British Aerospace BAe 146 (which ceased to be produced 2001) were preferred for use into the airport (although Maersk Air operated flights with Boeing 737-500 aircraft),[6] and then the most distant destination was Copenhagen, 1,300 km (810 mi). The Airbus A319 of Atlantic Airways is able to utilise the extended runway, and services with this type with Atlantic Airways began in March 2012.[11] Tourist summer flights to Barcelona and Milan were introduced. However, in 2014 they decided to stop the routes to Milan and to London. Instead, they chose to fly to Mallorca and to Aberdeen, later changed to Edinburgh,[12] and in 2017 to Gran Canaria.

On 26 March 2016, Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) began to fly from Copenhagen to Vágar, the first airline other than Atlantic to do so in many years.[13] SAS has had trouble with fog landings which caused cancellations. But in February 2019 SAS started using the Required Navigation Performance procedure, which allows landings in more fog, but requires special onboard equipment, pilot training and approval from the aviation administration.[14] Atlantic Airways began using the system in 2012 as first airline in Europe.[15]

The airport is currently managed by the Danish Transport Authority although the ownership of the airport was handed over to the Faroese government in May 2007.[16][17]

A number of domestic Faroese destinations can be reached from Vágar by the Atlantic Airways helicopter service. International destinations include Copenhagen, Aalborg and Billund in Denmark, Reykjavík in Iceland, Edinburgh in Scotland, Bergen in Norway and Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca in Spain.