Aalborg flew before it had an airport. On 4 September 1936 Denmark’s first domestic air route opened between Copenhagen and a grass strip at Rørdal, with an eight-seat Fokker covering the trip in 100 minutes. The proper airport, Denmark’s first in the provinces, was opened by the transport minister N. P. Fisker on 29 May 1938 with an air show that drew 75,000 spectators. It was built jointly by the municipalities of Aalborg and Nørresundby, and in 1939 it handled 6,052 passengers.

That modest field became one of the prime German objectives when Denmark was invaded on 9 April 1940. Lex notes that securing Aalborg’s airfield was among the most important aims of the attack. Later that morning, after the first drop at Masnedø at about 05:00, a platoon of Fallschirmjäger landed at Aalborg. Wikipedia’s account, drawing on Dildy and Lindeberg, says they met no resistance, that aircraft were landing within the hour, and that more than 200 landings and take-offs followed that day, mostly flying troops and fuel on to Fornebu in Norway.

The Germans renamed the airfield Fliegerhorst Aalborg West and made it one of the largest airfields in Europe. The Danish Defence says about 270 farms were expropriated; Aalborg Airport’s own history speaks of the land growing from 254 to 5,000 tønder land, roughly 140 to 2,750 hectares, with concrete runways among the longest of the day. Aircraft of Bordfliegergruppe 196 flew maritime reconnaissance from here, and the base stayed a springboard first for Norway and then for control of the North Sea. The RAF paid for attacking it: on 13 August 1940, eleven of twelve Blenheims of No. 82 Squadron were lost.

After the liberation the RAF took over the airfield, and in 1946 the Danish state took ownership. Flyvestation Aalborg was created on 8 January 1951 as a joint undertaking of the defence and transport ministries, according to the Danish Defence and Lex; the airport’s own history dates the air station to 1952. The military side took the northern part of the field, and a new civil terminal was built on the southern side in 1954, the division that still shapes the site.

With money from NATO’s infrastructure programme, Aalborg was built up in the 1950s alongside Karup and Skrydstrup as one of Denmark’s three NATO Main Air Bases, and it was tied into the NEPS fuel pipeline. Between 1974 and 1977 Denmark built 84 hardened aircraft shelters at its six military air stations. The Danish Defence’s own history notes that the air force’s first years were marked by many accidents; the Wikipedia history of the service, citing Danish sources, counts 89 F-84s crashed and 40 pilots killed across the force.

Aalborg became the home of the night and all-weather fighters. According to F-16.net’s unit histories, Eskadrille 723 arrived in 1952 with Meteor NF.11 night fighters and was joined by Eskadrille 726. Both flew the radar-equipped F-86D Sabre from 1958; the national aviation museum lists 59 F-86Ds in Danish service from 1958 to 1964. From 1964–1965 the two squadrons converted to the F-104G Starfighter, and in 1971 ex-Canadian CF-104D two-seaters were added. The museum records 25 F-104Gs and 4 TF-104Gs, flown by Eskadrille 723 and 726 until 1986.

Eskadrille 723 was the first Aalborg squadron to receive the F-16 and became fully operational in March 1984; Eskadrille 726 had to wait for the follow-on order, whose jets came off the Fokker line from 1986. Aalborg also became the air force’s F-16 workshop: F-16.net records that the Pacer Loft I update of the first 58 jets and the Mid-Life Update of all 61 remaining F-16s were carried out there.

The Aalborg squadrons took Denmark into its first air war since 1945. The Danish Defence records that four F-16s deployed to Grazzanise in Italy on 21 January 1999, rising to eight in April, and flew about 600 sorties and 2,250 hours in Operation Allied Force, dropping 24 bombs. F-16.net dates the deployment of Eskadrille 723 and 726 from 23 March to 10 June 1999, which covers the air campaign rather than the whole detachment. In 2002–2003 Eskadrille 726 flew from Manas in Kyrgyzstan, where Danish F-16s logged 743 missions over Afghanistan.

The end came in stages. Eskadrille 723 was disbanded on 8 January 2001 without receiving the upgrade, handing its aircraft to 726. Eskadrille 726 followed when all Danish fighters were concentrated at Skrydstrup; F-16.net gives 31 December 2005 for its disbandment, while Wikipedia gives 10 January 2006 for the decommissioning of both squadrons. Neither date has been checked against an official Danish text, so this page gives the end of fighter flying at Aalborg as 2005–2006.

Since the fighters left, Aalborg has belonged to Air Transport Wing, which has more than 400 staff and describes its job as delivering the Danish Defence’s air transport and airborne surveillance operations quickly, precisely and effectively, anywhere. Its flying unit is Eskadrille 721, the air force’s transport squadron, which flew from Værløse until that base lost its last flying unit in 2004. The exact date of the squadron’s move to Aalborg has not been confirmed from an official source.

Eskadrille 721’s lineage runs through eight C-47 Dakotas from 1953, six C-54 Skymasters from 1959, three Gulfstream IIIs and three C-130H Hercules, the latter in service from 1975. The Danish Defence says the C-130Hs were replaced from 2005 by four C-130Js; the national aviation museum lists three C-130Js from 2003. The stretched J can carry about 120 passengers, 64 paratroopers or 19,050 kg of cargo, and has flown in Afghanistan, Iraq and Africa and to Station Nord in north-east Greenland.

The four CL-604 Challengers fly VIP trips for the royal family and the government, patient transport and, since late 2011, surveillance with cameras and sensors: fisheries inspection, search and rescue, anti-piracy patrols in the Indian Ocean and Frontex border missions. Sources differ on the number: the Danish Defence says four, while Lex and the museum list three, and the museum dates the type from 1998. The wing’s motto is Fortis, Firmus Undique, strong, reliable, everywhere.

Aalborg is where the Royal Danish Air Force keeps its Arctic reach. Eskadrille 721 supports Arctic Command in Greenland for about ten days every month, flying fisheries inspection, search and rescue and passenger transport, and one Challenger is permanently stationed with Air Group West at Kangerlussuaq to improve surveillance and rescue cover over the island. The Hercules supplies Station Nord and the Sirius Patrol, and the squadron regularly works on short, rough strips in difficult weather.

Rescue at home is covered from the same base. A Merlin helicopter of Eskadrille 722, whose parent squadron lives at Karup, is one of three crews on watch 24 hours a day, alongside Skrydstrup and Roskilde, and can be airborne within minutes of an alarm. Denmark bought 14 Merlins in 2001; they entered service in 2007 and the last arrived in 2010. The Danish Special Operations Command is also stationed at Flyvestation Aalborg.

The next chapter is unmanned. On 25 October 2024 the defence minister placed operational control and maintenance of Denmark’s new long-range surveillance drones at Aalborg, citing its access to the North Sea and North Atlantic, its Arctic experience and its maintenance base; about 70 posts are planned at Aalborg, with Kangerlussuaq a possible operating site. Four drones were ordered on 22 July 2025, the first due from 2028; the type and price were not published. The new A330 tanker-transports, by contrast, are going to Karup.

Aalborg is a true joint-use field. The air station runs the airfield itself, its security and its fire and rescue service, and the civil Aalborg Airport operates immediately south of the military side, sharing the runways, the fire service and air traffic control. The municipalities of North Jutland took the civil airport over from the state on 1 July 1997, and it has grown through new terminals in 2001 and 2013 into the third-largest airport in Denmark, with 1,500,543 passengers in 2025 and a rail link opened on 13 December 2020 at a cost of 226 million kroner.

Sharing a runway means sharing its disruptions. On the night of 24–25 September 2025, drones were reported over Aalborg from 21:44 and the airport closed temporarily, days after drones had shut Copenhagen Airport. The Danish Defence confirmed drone sightings over several military installations that week and said it could bring drones down over military sites depending on the threat. The episode was one reason Denmark’s long-range drone and counter-drone plans took on new urgency in 2025–2026.

The civil side has its own long story. Scheduled traffic slumped in 1951 when SAS briefly dropped the Copenhagen route, the 1954 terminal was first enlarged in 1969, charter flights began in 1971 and a much larger terminal followed in 1982. The 2001 terminal cost 110 million kroner and was extended in 2007 and again in 2013, when a 175-million-kroner extension doubled the gates to 11. Passenger numbers reached a record 1,609,965 in 2018, fell by 65 per cent in the pandemic year 2020, and recovered to 1,500,543 in 2025.