the site by railway after a track had been laid to the site from the port. The tall steel mast was completed in December. The wooden hangar was with a height of . It was covered in of tarp. The hangar was completed on 15 February 1926. Mining ceased in Ny-Ålesund in 1929; it was taken up again in 1941, but because of the Second World War the town was evacuated the following year. From 1946, the Royal Norwegian Air Force started serving Ny-Ålesund with their Consolidated PBY Catalina amphibian aircraft. The aircraft were able to land if there was no ice on the fjord and lighting and weather permitted it. The first flight took place on 10 May and consisted of post drops. No further flights were carried out until 1949; one of the flights that year was an air ambulance operation. The service also dropped post at the other Norwegian settlements in Svalbard. In 1961, the Catalinas were replaced with Grumman HU-16B Albatross aircraft. Kvadehuksletta proposal The first proposal for an airport serving Ny-Ålesund was launched by the brothers Einar Sverre Pedersen and Gunnar Sverre Pedersen. Einar worked as chief navigator in the Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) and was instrumental in developing the airline routes over the North Pole. He envisioned that the airport in Svalbard could serve as an emergency landing aerodrome for intercontinental flights, and proposed that the Norwegian trunk airline service be extended to Svalbard. The brothers went on an expedition to Spitsbergen in 1956 to conduct further surveys. Their initial observations concluded that Kvadehussletta, the outermost part of Brøggerhalvøya, was the best-suited place for a major airport. They initially planned for a long runway, which could easily be expanded to . Hotellneset and Adventdalen, both close to Longyearbyen, were rejected because the areas were too small and due to poor weather conditions. The brothers presented the idea to the Government of Norway and SAS, but neither party was interested in investing in an airport. They contacted Kings Bay and asked the company to lease or purchase land to build the airport. The company was positive, but required that the airport remained under Norwegian ownership and regulations. On 22 October 1958, negotiations started with Vestlandske Flyselskap to start an airline service from the mainland to Svalbard. Financing of the airport was in part to be secured through a Hilton hotel, which would provide accommodation for