{"id":4130,"date":"2023-03-21T08:55:44","date_gmt":"2023-03-21T08:55:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aviation-news.info\/?p=4130"},"modified":"2023-03-21T09:27:06","modified_gmt":"2023-03-21T09:27:06","slug":"visby-the-only-commercial-airport-on-the-swedish-island-of-gotland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aviation-news.info\/?p=4130","title":{"rendered":"Visby: The Only Commercial Airport On The Swedish Island Of Gotland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sweden is known, among other things, for being the country in the world with the most islands. While only around 1,000 of its more than 267,000 islands are inhabited, some are still large enough to require their own airports. One of these is the island of Gotland, situated off the Nordic country’s southeastern coast.<\/p>\n

More than 80 years old<\/h2>\n

According to\u00a0Swedavia, which operates Gotland’s Visby Airport (VBY), flights to the island predate the airport itself. Indeed, as early as 1925,\u00a0Dornier\u00a0Wal\u00a0flying boats\u00a0from German carrier Deutsche Aero Lloyd were making intermediate stopovers in Gotland’s bay of Slite on their way from Stockholm to Szczecin and Danzig to Berlin.<\/p>\n

In the years that followed, seaplanes also took off from and landed on Lake Tingst\u00e4de, but, as traffic increased, so did the need for a permanent, land-based commercial airport. With this in mind, Visby Airport opened in the northeast of the island in January 1942, 81 years ago. Commercial flights commenced that October.<\/p>\n

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\"Visby<\/picture><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
Photo:\u00a0W. Carter via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

For more than a decade, aircraft flying to and from Visby Airport had to take off and depart using a grass runway. However, 1956 saw the construction of a paved strip. Today, this asphalt runway (03\/21) measures 2,000 meters (6,562 feet). The facility also retains a grass runway (10\/28) which clocks in at 1,100 meters (3,609 feet).<\/p>\n

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Visby Airport today<\/h2>\n

Gotland has now been served by jet aircraft for more than half a century, following\u00a0KLM’s deployment of the\u00a0Fokker\u00a0F28 ‘Fellowship’ to the island in 1972. Meanwhile, 1990 saw the airport’s first Boeing 737-operated services.<\/p>\n