Following the 1962 mining accident and the subsequent Kings Bay Affair, Ny-Ålesund was transformed from a mining town to a research outpost. The need for an airport to support commercial activity in Ny-Ålesund arose in 1965 with the construction of Kongsfjord Telemetry Station. The Royal Norwegian Council for Scientific and Industrial Research needed to have an aviation connection with Longyearbyen to send magnetic tapes with the downloaded data to Germany. A road was built from the settlement to Hamnerabben, the site of the telemetry station. The top of the hill was sufficiently flat that a runway could be constructed. It was built by giving a long straight section of the road a width of . Waste oil was poured on the gravel to bind it. A smaller road was built to the north of the runway to allow road transport while the runway was in use.