Stavanger Airport, Sola

Stavanger Airport, Sola, is the third-busiest airport in Norway after Oslo-Gardermoen and Bergen, handling roughly 4.5 million passengers annually. SVG's significance is tied directly to its role as the primary aviation gateway for Norway's offshore oil and gas industry: Stavanger is the headquarters of Equinor (formerly Statoil) and the operational center of the Norwegian continental shelf, and the Sola airfield hosts the world's single largest cluster of offshore-support helicopter operations, with CHC Helikopter Service, Bristow Norway, and Airlift running North Sea rotations from a dedicated helicopter terminal. SVG is effectively the largest commercial helicopter airport in the world by offshore-worker throughput. SVG's fixed-wing operations are served by SAS Scandinavian Airlines, Norwegian, Widerøe, KLM, Lufthansa, British Airways, Icelandair, and seasonal charter carriers, with Oslo and Bergen trunk services supporting oil-sector business travel, plus international nonstops to Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, London (Heathrow and Gatwick), Manchester, Aberdeen, and Houston (a reflection of the trans-Atlantic oil-industry linkage between Stavanger and the US Gulf Coast). Widerøe operates Dash 8 domestic service to smaller Norwegian regional points. Two runways serve the airport: 18/36 at 8,629 ft (2,630 m) and 11/29 at 5,659 ft (1,725 m). The passenger terminal has been progressively expanded, and a dedicated helicopter terminal ('Sola Helikopterterminal') handles offshore operations separately from fixed-wing. SVG is also home to the Royal Norwegian Air Force's Sola air base and was historically one of Norway's most important military airfields — the Battle of Sola on 9 April 1940 was one of the opening engagements of World War II's Norwegian Campaign. The airport sits 14 km (9 mi) southwest of Stavanger center at an elevation of 29 ft (9 m) on the North Sea coast.