The paper investigates the use of vortex methods in the computation of important flows for wind turbine aerodynamics. These flows are characterised by inflow velocity unsteadiness, spatial variations and non-zero spanwise component. First, computational vortex methods are shown to match analytical solutions on simple geometries. Second, these geometries will be studied to reveal the effects of these flows on airfoil aerodynamics: unsteady damping and load reduction when subjected to side slip or spanwise inflow velocity variations. Finally, vortex methods will be compared with traditional BEM methods in full wind turbine configurations under real operating inflows such as shear, yaw and turbulence which are characterised by unsteadiness and three-dimensional effects. Vortex methods allow quantifying the error of BEM methods for these conditions.