Skien Airport, Geiteryggen Skien flyplass, Geiteryggen | |||||||||||
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Summary | |||||||||||
Airport type | Public | ||||||||||
Owner | Skien Municipality | ||||||||||
Operator | Grenland Luftsportssenter (GLSS) | ||||||||||
Serves | Skien, Telemark, Norway | ||||||||||
Location | Geiteryggen, Skien | ||||||||||
Elevation AMSL | 141 m / 463 ft | ||||||||||
Coordinates | 59°11′06″N 009°34′01″E / 59.18500°N 9.56694°E | ||||||||||
Map | |||||||||||
Runways | |||||||||||
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Statistics (2014) | |||||||||||
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Skien Airport, Geiteryggen (Norwegian: Skien flyplass, Geiteryggen; IATA: SKE[3], ICAO: ENSN) is a regional airport located at Geiteryggen, 5.5 kilometers (3.4 mi) 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 1,416-by-30-meter (4,646 ft × 98 ft) 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 650-meter (2,130 ft) 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 1,050 meters (3,440 ft) was carried out in 1970s. 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. It gradually introduced four domestic and international services before folding in 2011.