Stockholm Arlanda Airport - History

History

The airport was first used in 1959, but only for practice flights. In 1960, it opened for limited civil traffic, and in 1962 the official opening ceremony took place. It was used for intercontinental traffic already in 1960 since the runway at Bromma was too short. Scandinavian Airlines started using Armstrong Whitworth Argosy's on North American routes. The airport was also used very early by Pan American World Airways. The name Arlanda was decided after a competition prior to the airport opening. It is derived from Arland, an old name for the parish Ärlinghundra (now Husby-Ärlinghundra in Märsta) where the airport is situated. The '-a' was added in analogy with other Swedish place names ending with -landa, and also makes the name a play on the Swedish verb "landa", which means "to land". The 1960s and 70s saw increases in traffic with scheduled traffic and charter traffic. The Boeing 747 jumbojet was started to be used in the 1970s both on one stop scheduled flights to New York and on weekend nonstop charters to the Canary Islands. Domestic flights to Gothenburg, Malmö, Luleå and Kiruna were operated by SAS DC-9s from Arlanda since they were considered too noisy to be used at downtown Bromma. The rest of domestic traffic operated out of Bromma and all international traffic out of Arlanda.

In 1983 the domestic traffic operated by Linjeflyg moved from Bromma to Arlanda, using the terminal now known as Terminal 4. In 1990 two new domestic terminals called "Domestic 2 and 3" were built south of the first domestic terminal. In 1992 the terminal 2 was partly abandoned because of traffic decrease. It started to be used for international traffic the year after, and the main domestic and international terminals are renumbered into 4 and 5. In June 1996, the first Douglas DC-9-82 of Italian airline Air One Smart Carrier landed at 14:14 for the inaugural charter flight. The third runway was built 1998-2002. However, a recession in 2002 delayed ti opening until 2003. At that time protests were raised by people living under its flight path in the municipality of Upplands Väsby. Traffic has recovered since and is now showing healthy increases but the third runway is only used during peak hours for environmental reasons. In September 2010 the first Airbus A380 superjumbo landed at the airport.