Ny-Ålesund Airport, Hamnerabben (; ) is an airport serving the research community of Ny-Ålesund in Svalbard, Norway. The airport is owned by Kings Bay, who also owns the company town. The only flights available are to Svalbard Airport, Longyear, operated two to four times a week by Lufttransport using Dornier 228 aircraft. The services are organized as corporate charters and tickets are only available after permission from Kings Bay.
Between 1925 and 1928, Ny-Ålesund saw four air expeditions to the North Pole, two of which required the construction of an airship hangar and mast. The first proposal for an airport in Ny-Ålesund was launched in 1956 by Norsk Polar Navigasjon, who proposed an airport at Kvadehuksletta. Soviet protests against the airport caused the Norwegian authorities to oppose the plans, which were laid to rest in the early 1960s. Construction at Hamnerabben started in 1965 following the decision to build Kongsfjord Telemetry Station. The airport first hosted service to temporary landing strips near Longyearbyen, but from 1975 served Svalbard Airport. Lufttransport started flights with helicopters in the 1980s, but from 1989 has flown with fixed-wing aircraft.
History
Early aviation in Ny-Ålesund
Ny-Ålesund was established as a mining company town by Kings Bay in 1916. Between 1925 and 1928, four attempts were made to reach the North Pole by air from Ny-Ålesund. In May 1925, Roald Amundsen used Ny-Ålesund as a base for two flying boats, but the expedition failed to come closer than 88 degrees north. On 9 May 1926, Floyd Bennett and Richard E. Byrd used Ny-Ålesund as both the starting and landing for their expedition. Although they claimed to have reached the pole, there is strong evidence that they could not have accomplished this. On 11 May, Amundsen and Umberto Nobile's airship Norge left Ny-Ålesund and traveled via the North Pole to Alaska. This is regarded as the first successful expedition to the North Pole. After two short skirmishes, Nobile's airship Italia left Ny-Ålesund on 23 May 1928 to reach the North Pole, but crashed on the return.
The flying boats did not require any specific infrastructure, although they had to be brought by ship to Ny-Ålesund, where they were assembled. They took off from a manually groomed air strip on snow. For the airship expeditions, a hangar and a mast were needed. Twenty-two carpenters arrived in October 1925 along with supplies on SS Alekto. Materials were transported to the site by railway after a track had been laid to the site from the port. The tall steel mast was completed in December. The wooden hangar was with a height of . It was covered in of tarp. The hangar was completed on 15 February 1926.
Mining ceased in Ny-Ålesund in 1929; it was taken up again in 1941, but because of the Second World War the town was evacuated the following year. From 1946, the Royal Norwegian Air Force started serving Ny-Ålesund with their Consolidated PBY Catalina amphibian aircraft. The aircraft were able to land if there was no ice on the fjord and lighting and weather permitted it. The first flight took place on 10 May and consisted of post drops. No further flights were carried out until 1949; one of the flights that year was an air ambulance operation. The service also dropped post at the other Norwegian settlements in Svalbard. In 1961, the Catalinas were replaced with Grumman HU-16B Albatross aircraft.
Kvadehuksletta proposal
The first proposal for an airport serving Ny-Ålesund was launched by the brothers Einar Sverre Pedersen and Gunnar Sverre Pedersen. Einar worked as chief navigator in the Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) and was instrumental in developing the airline routes over the North Pole. He envisioned that the airport in Svalbard could serve as an emergency landing aerodrome for intercontinental flights, and proposed that the Norwegian trunk airline service be extended to Svalbard.
The brothers went on an expedition to Spitsbergen in 1956 to conduct further surveys. Their initial observations concluded that Kvadehussletta, the outermost part of Brøggerhalvøya, was the best-suited place for a major airport. They initially planned for a long runway, which could easily be expanded to . Hotellneset and Adventdalen, both close to Longyearbyen, were rejected because the areas were too small and due to poor weather conditions.