Facilities

Stavanger Airport, Sola is Norway's oldest airport, opened by King Haakon VII on 29 May 1937. The airport was the second to have a concrete runway in Europe.

Originally, the idea was to locate the Stavanger airport at Forus in Stavanger Municipality, but after the war the Royal Norwegian Air Force decided to use Sola temporarily until the new airport was built, and nothing ever became of Forus.

Stavanger Airport has two passenger terminals, one each for airplanes and helicopters. The old terminal was demolished and made way for taxiway H. The airport has two crossing runways: the main runway, north–south (18/36) and the main runway for helicopters, which is oriented northwest–southeast (10/28).

Expansion of the airplane terminal took place in 2009. The new gates were built without jet bridges. The airport's two largest airlines, SAS and Norwegian, showed little interest in such amenity and desired quicker turnaround times. SAS though later said that they did want jet bridges for their larger jet aircraft, and only wanted gates without jet bridges for their smaller turboprop aircraft. The lack of jetbridges angered the societies representing the disabled and multiple sclerosis-afflicted, prompting several Rogaland politicians to put pressure on Avinor to reconsider the building. In April 2009, Avinor decided not to build jet bridges.

Offshore helicopter flights out of Stavanger commenced in 1966. Instead of operating out of Sola, the operator Helikopter Service decided to operate their services out of Stavanger Airport, Forus, a closed-down airport built during the Second World War. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s this became an increasingly problematic solution, not least due to increased development of the area. It eventually became inevitable to relocate the base to Sola. To allow for the transfer, the airport authority built a new, separate helicopter terminal at Sola, costing 56 million Norwegian kroner. It opened on 7 March 1989, at the same time as operations ceased out of Forus. At the same time Helikopter Service built an operations center at the airport, including a hangar and maintenance center. In total, the relocation from Forus cost about 120 million kroner.

Civilian airlines

Det Norske Luftfartsselskap (DNL, later Scandinavian Airlines System or SAS) started flying to Sola after the war, as did Braathens SAFE in 1946 on its routes to Europe and the Far East with the Douglas DC-3 aircraft. In 1952, Braathens SAFE received concession to fly the routes Oslo–Stavanger, Oslo–Kristiansand–Stavanger and the coastal route Stavanger–Bergen–Ålesund–Trondheim–Bodø–Tromsø. Widerøe established itself at Sola in the late 1980s after they bought Sandefjord Airport, Torp-based Norsk Air. For a time, SAS operated intercontinental nonstop flights between Stavanger and Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) located in Texas in the U.S., with this service being operated by PrivatAir with Boeing 737-700 jetliners configured with 44 business class seats.

Foreign airlines

British Airways predecessors had started operating at Sola after World War II, in 1980 they started regular flights with British Aircraft Corporation BAC One-Eleven jet aircraft to London Heathrow. Later, the route was operated with Boeing 737-200/-300/-400s. For a period the Boeing 737-400 morning flight continued to Paris–Charles de Gaulle after London Heathrow as an extension of the flight. British Airways later started operating Boeing 757-200s with Boeing 737-200s flying new services twice daily to London Gatwick. SAS Scandinavian Airlines operates two daily rotations to London Heathrow, Norwegian operates a daily rotation to London, Gatwick. Dan-Air flew the route London Gatwick – Newcastle – Stavanger, until they were taken over by British Airways in 1992. Norwegian Air Shuttle has flown to Newcastle as well.

The oil industry has also required scheduled routes between Stavanger and Scotland, primarily to British oil center in Aberdeen. In addition to SAS, Air Anglia (later AirUK, KLMuk) flew the route. Today, this route is flown by Scandinavian Airlines and Widerøe. In the 1970s, KLM started flights to Stavanger from Amsterdam.

Air France also operated to Stavanger, initially routing Paris–Charles de Gaulle - Stavanger - Gothenburg using Boeing 737s. The route later became a twice-daily direct Paris - Stavanger connection using Embraer ERJ-170 jet aircraft, until it was discontinued in October 2015.

On 15 February 2010, Scandinavian Airlines announced that Widerøe would take over their regional routes connecting airports in Western Norway, including the route from Stavanger to Kristiansand. SAS will retire their five Fokker 50 aircraft by November 2010, and Widerøe will take over the operations and 75 employees, and serve the routes using Q300 and Q400 aircraft.