Officials unaware of plan to sell Húsavík airport terminal

Local government officials and members of parliament say they were unaware of plans to sell the Húsavík airport terminal, mbl.is reports. The proposal is included in the draft national budget, which seeks authorisation for the minister to sell the building.

Sigurjón Þórðarson, chairman of the budget committee and a member of parliament for the constituency, said he had not known about the proposal. He believes it came from Isavia’s domestic airports division.

“I pushed this summer for funding to be provided for the maintenance needed at the site,” Þórðarson said. “Preventive maintenance is needed at the terminal because the building is deteriorating. This is something we members of parliament for the constituency need to examine, because it concerns the community’s infrastructure.”

Sigrún Björk Jakobsdóttir, managing director of Isavia’s domestic airports, confirmed that the proposal to sell the building came from the company.

“There are no longer scheduled flights to Húsavík, and medical flights do not need facilities in the terminal. First and foremost, what we have in mind is better use of the state’s real estate,” she said. “As things stand, it is rather unlikely that scheduled flights to Húsavík will resume.”

Asked why the building had not been maintained, Jakobsdóttir said Isavia had lacked the funds. She acknowledged that there was a significant infrastructure maintenance backlog in the system and that the smallest airports, where scheduled flights no longer operate, had been given lower priority.

She said scheduled flights had been discontinued and that medical flights did not require a terminal, meaning Isavia no longer had a use for the building in its operations.

Bergþór Bjarnason, municipal manager of Norðurþing, and Helena Eydís Ingólfsdóttir, chair of the municipal council, said they had not been consulted about authorising the sale.

“We only saw this in the draft budget and had not heard about these plans before,” they said.

They pointed out that charter and private flights still operate at the airport, while companies visiting Bakki use the facility. They therefore said the terminal was still needed to serve the airport.

Asked whether the Vaðlaheiði tunnel and improved road connections had made Húsavík Airport unnecessary, they said Húsavík was 75 kilometres from Akureyri and that the airport was used when aircraft could not land in Akureyri.

“It cannot be overlooked that we receive several hundred thousand visitors every summer, and it is a safety issue to keep the airport open,” they said.

Members of parliament Þorgrímur Sigmundsson and Jens Garðar Helgason, both representing the Northeast constituency, also told mbl.is that they had not known about the proposal. They agreed that the terminal needed maintenance and that the work should be carried out.