Raron

46°18'16"N 007°49'19"E

Runway: 10/28 - 840x40m - concrete  (was 2400x40m)

Raron airfield (German: Flugplatz Raron ICAO: LSTA) is an airfield 75kilometers south-southeast of Berne.
It is located at the former Swiss air base Raron (ICAO: LSMN) along with the Raron operation of Air Zermatt (ICAO: LSER). The air base  opened in October 1942. It was one of the Swiss Redoubt airfields and included cavern hangars in the side of a mountain.
The airfield began to see civilian use from 1977.

After the end of the Cold War, the Swiss military released the airfield in 1995. For some years, the east side of the airfield was used for the excavation works of the Lötschberg Base Tunnel, part of the Neuen Eisenbahn-Alpentransversalen (NEAT). On 30 January 2002 the Swiss Frederal Council Allowed the airfield on the list of civilian airfields, albeit with a severely shortened runway.


Around 2000 the runway became an offloading station for the tunnelbuilders of the tunnel  (link)


Raron, looking east up the Rhone valley, 2008.  (map.search.ch).


Raron, 2011 (Jonas Goetz, on Flickr)

In January 2011, the airfield was threatened to be closed by the local community to become a scientific economical zone. A petition and a federal appeal overthrew that decision though. In November 2011, the Canton of Wallis followed the ruling of the Swiss Federal Council and reaffirmed its status as a civilian air field for the region. The status was reaffirmed again by the Federal Agency for Civil Aviation (Bundesamt für Zivilluftfahrt - BAZL) in May 2012.