Bern-Belp Airport

Geschichte

Bern Airport, formerly Regionalflugplatz Bern-Belp in German, is an airport serving Bern, the capital of Switzerland. The airport is located within the town limits of Belp, and features flights to some European metropolitan and several leisure destinations. It handled 183,319 passengers in 2016, a decrease of 3.5 percent over 2015, and serves as the homebase for SkyWork Airlines and a base for Helvetic Airways.HistoryThe airport was established in 1929 by Alpar, a private airline that operated within Switzerland until the outbreak of World War II. After the war, Alpar remained in business as the airport's operator, supported by subsidies of the cantonal and city government. A planned expansion of the airport in 1947 did not pass in a popular referendum, and it was not until 1950 that the first concrete airstrip was built. In 2014, Alpar was renamed to Flughafen Bern AG - Bern Airport.Multiple attempts to build an international airport in or around Bern instead of the small regional airport at Belpmoos failed. In 1945, the national parliament decided to build the first international airport, now Zürich Airport, at Kloten near Zürich instead of in Utzensdorf near Bern, though plans for development there were retained as an inter-urban airport which would require less space and thus placate local opposition by farming interests. A 1963 airport project near Herrenschwanden was abandoned because of strong popular opposition, notably by farmers, as was a 1966 project in Rosshäusern and a 1970 project Kallnach.