[1] It is Norway's third-busiest airport, with both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopter traffic for the offshore North Sea oil installations.

The airport's two largest airlines, SAS and Norwegian, showed little interest in such amenity and desired quicker turnaround times.

[6] The lack of jetbridges angered the societies representing the disabled and multiple sclerosis-afflicted, prompting several Rogaland politicians to put pressure on Avinor to reconsider the building.

[10] To allow for the transfer, the airport authority built a new, separate helicopter terminal at Sola, costing 56 million Norwegian kroner.

[11] Det Norske Luftfartsselskap (DNL, later Scandinavian Airlines System or SAS) started flying to Sola after the war, as did Braathens SAFE in 1946 on its routes to Europe and the Far East with the Douglas DC-3 aircraft.

Widerøe established itself at Sola in the late 1980s after they bought Sandefjord Airport, Torp-based Norsk Air.

Eastern Airways operating Embraer ERJ-145 and ERJ-135 regional jets and Widerøe using Bombardier Dash-8-402Q (Q400) propjets both fly to Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom.

[citation needed] In addition to SAS, Air Anglia (later AirUK, KLMuk) flew the route.

The route later became a twice-daily direct Paris - Stavanger connection using Embraer ERJ-170 jet aircraft, until it was discontinued in October 2015.

[13] The Norwegian authorities have denied, among others, Northwest Airlines (since merged into Delta Air Lines) the right to start flying intercontinental flights from the United States.

Technicians and equipment at the Sola AFB facilitate turnover and housing of fighters, predominately the RNoAF F-16A Fighting Falcons, as well as F-16s and other aircraft from NATO allies.

[citation needed] Heli-One (when part of Helikopter Service) had final assembly of most of the Bell 412 helicopters when introduced to the RNoAF.

10/28 has no traditional instrument approaches such as ILS, and is less frequently used, among other considerations to reduce noise emissions and flying over built areas, catering for population living in central parts of Sola municipality.

On 9 August 1961 Vickers VC.1 Viking 3B (registration: G-AHPM), operated by Cunard Eagle Airways (later British Eagle) crashed into a mountain near Holta on approach to Stavanger Airport, Sola from London Heathrow airport with the deaths of all 39 on board: 3 crew, 34 schoolboys from The Archbishop Lanfranc School in Thornton Heath, London, plus two members of staff from the school.

The 50th anniversary was marked by a book published in summer 2011, The Lanfranc Boys by Rosalind Jones, sister of Quentin Green, one of the victims.

On 7 January 2020 a major fire broke out in the main parking garage, later found to have started from a vehicle with faulty wiring (2005 Opel Zafira) as the driver attempted to start the vehicle and it subsequently caught fire then quickly spread to nearby cars.

[citation needed] The fire burned for nearly 7 hours, causing a partial collapse of the parking garage and destroying an estimated two to three hundred vehicles.