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. . 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. 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. In 1988, Atlantic Airways was flying British AerospaceBAe 146-200 jet service nonstop to Copenhagen. Until 2004 Maersk Air also operated flights into the airport. Maersk Air flew Boeing 737-500 jetliners into the airport with service to Copenhagen.
Development since the 2000s
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 terminal opened on 17 June 2014 with increased passenger capacity. The runway was extended from to in 2011, allowing a greater variety of aircraft types to be used, and further-away destinations to be introduced. Construction work started in May 2010, and on 3 December 2011, the extended runway was opened and put into use for the first time. Previously, jet aircraft with short airfield performance such as the British Aerospace BAe 146 were preferred for use into the airport, and then the most distant destination was Copenhagen,. 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. 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, and in 2017 to Gran Canaria. On 26 March 2016, Scandinavian Airlines began to fly from Copenhagen to Vágar, the first airline other than Atlantic to do so in many years. 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. Atlantic Airways began using the system in 2012 as first airline in Europe. 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. 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.
Airlines and destinations
The airlines in the table below offer regular passenger scheduled and seasonal flights at Vágar Airport. On 13 March 2020, Atlantic Airways announced the suspension of all routes until 13 April 2020 except the route to Copenhagen due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There are occasional public charter flights done by major European airlines, e.g. Wizzair and Austrian Airlines, for example for supporters to football qualification matches. There are also fairly frequent corporate charter flights done by e.g. Widerøe. The extended runway and better instrument landing system has made it easier for airlines other than Atlantic Airways to land at Vágar.
Ground transport
There are bus services about 10 times each direction per day between the airport and Tórshavn. They take one hour. The road distance to Tórshavn is. The "Vágatunnilin" tunnel connects the airport and the Vágar island to the main towns and villages in the Faroe Islands.
25 January 1975: a Fokker F27 aircraft registered as OY-APB attempted to land on a wet and icy runway. Without having been informed of the conditions, the pilots veered the aircraft off the runway and collided with terrain.
26 September 1970: Icelandair Fokker F27 originating in Copenhagen with a stopover in Bergen, Norway. The flight from Bergen to Vágar Airport crashed in bad weather on Mykines. Eight of the 34 passengers lost their lives, and the badly injured were airlifted away by helicopter. A marble memorial was placed in the Church.
