Troll airfield

 airport  Add category

 Upload a photo

Troll Airfield is an airstrip located 6.8 kilometres (4.2 mi) from the research station Troll in Princess Martha Coast in Queen Maud Land, Antarctica. Owned and operated by the Norwegian Polar Institute, it consists of a 3300 m x 100 m (10 830 ft x 330 ft) runway on glacial blue ice on the Antarctic ice sheet. The airport is located at 1,232 metres (4,042 ft) above mean sea level and is 235 kilometres (146 mi) from the coast.

The airfield opened in 2005 and serves as the centre of the Dronning Maud Land Air Network (DROMLAN), a multinational cooperation to use Troll as an all-year hub to provide intercontinental traffic to Antarctica and onwards to the various research stations using aircraft suitable for inter-Antarctic operations. Intercontinental flights normally operate from Cape Town International Airport using Ilyushin 76, C-130 Hercules, P-3 Orion and similar, long-range aircraft. Feeding services to other research station is normally done either with Basler BT-67 aircraft, De Havilland DHC-6/300 Twin Otter aircraft and Dornier Do-228 aircraft and helicopters.



The airfield runway has capacity for large planes like H C-130, Ilyushin 76 or even (recently) a Boeing 737.
Troll airfield's path must be regularly maintained using icescraper and snow clearing machines, but the dominant wind direction from east helps to keep the path free of snow most of the year.