In the summer of 2024, Air Greenland launched what might just be one of the coolest airline routes ever, connecting Greenland to the Canadian Arctic. While this was initially a seasonal route for one year, it’s cool to see that this route will be returning in 2025, with a long season, no less, as flagged by AeroRoutes.
Air Greenland’s Nuuk to Iqaluit route details
Air Greenland is operating a seasonal once weekly route between Nuuk, Greenland (GOH), and Iqaluit, Canada (YFB). The 513-mile flight operates each Wednesday seasonally in both directions, and Air Greenland is using a 37-seat De Havilland Dash 8-200 for this service.
It’s cool to see for how long this is operating. For the summer 2024 season, the route is operating through October 23, and then for the summer 2025 season, the route will resume as of April 2. So this isn’t just a peak summer season route, but rather it lasts for over six months.
For the summer 2025 season, the route is operating with the following schedule:
GL771 Nuuk to Iqaluit departing 2:55PM arriving 2:50PM
GL772 Iqaluit to Nuuk departing 3:15PM arriving 8:15PM
There’s a three hour time difference between Nuuk and Iqaluit, so that’s quite an interesting schedule, eh? The westbound flight is blocked at 2hr5min and the eastbound flight is blocked at 2hr.
So, what are fares like in the market? They’re actually quite reasonable, when you consider the very low capacity of these flights. Depending on the direction of travel, one-way fares are $239-295 (USD), including all taxes and fees.
Prior to the 2024 resumption, Air Greenland last operated this route between 2014 and 2016. Here’s how Air Greenland CEO Jacob Nitter Sørensen describes this service:
“We know that there is a great desire for closer cooperation between Nunavut and Greenland and to ensure dialogue, it is natural to open a route to our neighbours to the west. We believe that this will create an even stronger basis for supporting the many business, political and cultural ties that already exist.”
“Our mission is to lift Greenland, and with the opening of the route to Iqaluit, we will greatly contribute to further opening up the country for cooperation with Inuit and neighbours to the west. It will be our fifth international route after Keflavik, Kastrup, Billund, Aalborg and now Iqaluit. The desire to visit each other in the Arctic region has increased since the last scheduled flight between the two capitals in 2014. We believe that the time and the local market are now right to resume the route.”
Air Greenland partners with Canadian North to offer same-day connections to Ottawa, and other destinations. Canadian North has a large route network through the Canadian Arctic, serving 27 destinations.
The logic for this Air Greenland route to Canada
While the Canadian Arctic and Greenland are geographically very close to one another and also have some cultural similarities, historically there hasn’t been much service between them. However, there has increasingly been talk of closer ties between the regions, given what they have in common.
In 2022, we saw an agreement signed between Nunavut and Greenland, intended to increase cooperation in the areas of culture, education, fishing, green energy, and improved mobility. Obviously this service is a big part of that.
Even prior to that, back in 2020, Canadian North revealed its desire to launch this exact route as well. That never did end up happening, unfortunately, but now Air Greenland has stepped in.
This route offers just 37 seats per direction per week, so this is a very low capacity route. Heck, over the course of each season, at most several hundred people take this flight. I’m curious what the passenger breakdown is between those exclusively traveling between the two airports, those connecting to Ottawa, and those connecting to other destinations in North America.
From an aviation geek standpoint, I can’t think of a much cooler flight than this, and I’d definitely be choosing a window seat on this service.
This service also comes as Nuuk Airport will play a more important role in the country’s aviation scene. Nuuk is getting a new airport (with a longer runway and larger terminal), and it means that Air Greenland will also shift its Airbus A330-800neo operations to this airport, even though that wasn’t previously possible.
Bottom line
In the summer of 2024, Air Greenland launched a once weekly seasonal flight between Nuuk, Greenland, and Iqaluit, Canada. This flight will now be returning in the summer of 2025, with a long season to boot. The flight is operated by a Dash 8, with a capacity of just 37 seats. What a cool flight, and it just reinforces how close Greenland is to Canada.
What do you make of Air Greenland’s route to Canada?
Membership is free and takes no more information than commenting as a guest. Earn status points for good contributions, and see fewer ads as your status grows.