Aalborg Airport — Aalborg, Denmark

During the Second World War, German forces occupied this North Jutland airfield and expanded it into one of the Luftwaffe's most important bases in occupied Denmark, using it to stage operations toward Norway. That military past is largely forgotten by the millions of Danes and tourists who now pass through what has become Denmark's third-busiest airport, serving Aalborg and the wider North Jutland region. The field rises a scant 10 feet above sea level, its two runways capable of handling domestic shuttle flights to Copenhagen alongside a growing slate of European leisure routes. Aalborg itself, a former industrial and shipping city along the Limfjord, has reinvented itself around education and technology in recent decades, and the airport's traffic has grown alongside that shift. The Royal Danish Air Force still maintains a presence alongside civilian operations, a legacy of the airfield's origins as a military installation before the war. For a region far from Copenhagen, AAL functions as the practical link connecting North Jutland to the rest of Europe.