Ørland Airport

Ørland hovedflystasjon Ørland lufthavn
Characteristics
ICAO code	ENOL
IATA code	OLA
Coordinates	63 ° 41 '57 "  N , 9 ° 36' 14"  E Coordinates: 63 ° 41 '57 "  N , 9 ° 36' 14"  E
Height above MSL	9 m (30  ft )
Transport links
Distance from the city center	1.4 km northwest of Brekstad
Basic data
operator	Luftforsvaret Municipality of Ørland
Passengers	4,074 (2017)
Flight movements	1,125 (2017)
Start-and runway
15/33	2714 m × 45 m asphalt

The Orland Airport ( norw. Ørland lufthavn ) is a civil mitgenutzter military airfield of the Royal Norwegian Air Force , which the device under the name hovedflystasjon Ørland u. a. uses as a base for combat aircraft. It is located in the municipality of Ørland at the exit of the Trondheimfjord about 25 km as the crow flies northwest of Trondheim in the Trøndelag province .

The base has recently hosted the NATO Tiger Meet several times .

history

The planning for the construction of the airfield began in early 1941 when Norway was under German occupation . The airfield was completed at the end of 1941 with a 2 km long runway made of wood in an east-west direction for the Luftwaffe . In the following year, construction of a concrete runway began, which lasted until 1944 and today forms the northern section of the only runway. The 11th and 12th squadrons of Destroyer Squadron 26 (11th and 12th / ZG 26), which were equipped with Ju 88G and Bf 110G , were located in Oerlandet, as it was called at the time, between August and October 1944 . In addition, between September and November 1944, the field housed the staff of Group IV of the same squadron, also equipped with Bf 110G. The 11./ZG 26 then used Ørland again from January 1945 until the end of the war, now with the Me 410 .

After the end of the Second World War, the British Royal Air Force first took over the airfield, which handed it over to Luftforsvaret in early November 1945 . Ørland was first used for civilian purposes for a short time from 1949 when Trøndelag Flyveselskap opened a connection with 3-seater Auster planes to Trondheim-Lade. In the early 1950s, Widerøe and Polarfly occasionally used the station for ambulance flights and SAS was allowed to use it as an emergency landing site from 1953.

F-16 of the 338th Squadron, 2009

The decision to expand into a "main flight station" for the Norwegian Air Force was made in 1950, as Norway was to receive US jet fighters , which required a longer runway than the British -made vampire jets previously used by the Air Force . In October 1954, the 338 Skvadron with F-84E, previously set up in Sola, arrived in Ørland, but the following year it was exchanged for more modern F-84Gs, which were flown until 1960. The conversion to the F-86F , which was used until 1966, had already started in June 1958 . In that year the conversion to the F-5A / B took place , which in turn was replaced in 1985 by the still active F-16A / B (later modernized to version F-16AM / BM).

As the F-16 successor, Norway ordered the F-35A and Ørland intended to be their main base. The first F-35A arrived here in early November 2017 and the F-16s were decommissioned in the 338th Squadron in late March 2019.

In the summer of 1967 Braathens SAFE started a seasonal connection to Trondheim-Værnes , which however did not bring the desired success. Widerøe included this connection in its flight plan in 1971, a container served as the handling terminal, and a terminal building was not put into operation until 1978. Civil flight operations then flourished with four daily flights to Trondheim. Ørland has existed as a parallel civil airport since 1985. The route to Trondheim was discontinued in 1987 and in the following years attempts were repeatedly made to operate the connection on a permanent basis until 1998 the provisional end came. North Flying has been operating the route to Oslo on behalf of Air Norway since 2003 . Air Norway ceased operations in 2017. In March 2017, a former Widerøe pilot founded the regional airline Fly Viking and took over this route. The fleet consisted of a De Havilland DHC-8-100 and a DHC-8-100. However, after only 9 months of flight operations on the Oslo-Ørland route, Fly Viking also had to give up because hoped-for government grants were not granted.

Military use

The Ørland hovedflystasjon is currently (2019) used by the following flying squadrons of the 138th squadron :

• 332nd Skvadron , equipped with F-35A , since 2017
• Detachment of the 330th Skvadron (under the 137th Squadron), equipped with Sea King Mk.43 rescue helicopters

The squadron is also responsible for non-flying formations of the Luftforsvaret such as the Luftvernartilleribataljon .

In addition, the NATO AWACS squadron from Geilenkirchen regularly uses the station as an advanced base.

Web links

Commons : Ørland Airport  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Airport data on World Aero Data ( 2006 )
• Aircraft accident data and report in the Aviation Safety Network (English)
• Orland Air Base website in Norwegian

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Passengers 2017. (Excel (xlsx); 28 kB) In: avinor.no. Avinor , accessed September 14, 2018 (Norwegian, English). 
2. ↑ Flight movements 2017. (Excel (xlsx); 66 kB) In: avinor.no. Avinor , accessed September 14, 2018 (Norwegian, English). 
3. ↑ Norway's First Three F-35 Jets Have Just Landed At Ørland Air Force Station, The Aviationist, November 3, 2017