This summer, Air Greenland will resume its summer flights between Nuuk (GOH), the capital of Greenland, and Iqaluit (YFB), the capital of Nunavut, Canada, beginning on June 26, 2024. The airline previously flew the route but suspended it due to costs. For 2024, it will be every Wednesday from June 26 to October 23, 2024. The flight will take about two hours.
While Greenland still won't be easy to get to this will make flights a bit easier, as previously, North American travelers would have had to go from the US or Canada to Copenhagen (Denmark) or Keflavik (Iceland) in order to reach Greenland. That's great if you want to combine Greenland with one of those destinations, but if you were hoping to visit Kalaallit Nunaat, as its called in the Greenlandic Inuit language, without a trip to Europe, it was generally impossible.
The airline is also partnering with Canadian North, which operates several flights out of Iqaluit, to offer same-day connections to Canada's capital city, Ottawa (YOW), which will make it easier for North American travelers to connect onward. This means, for example, a traveler in NYC could fly three hours to Ottawa, then three hours to Iqaluit, then two hours to Nuuk. It's still a long journey, but makes a bit more sense than flying 5.5-6 hours from NYC to Iceland and then nearly 4 hours back the opposite direction to Greenland.
Traveling to Greenland is also still not going to be quite what we would call cheap—getting to the most remote places in the world never is. But the more options there are for getting to a place, the cheaper it tends to me. More airlines = more competition = lower fares. And there's more good news on that front. The Nuuk airport is also scheduled to get a new runway in late 2024 which will allow bigger jets to land, and those extra seats could mean a decrease in fares as well.
With these new additions, we could start seeing more frequent deals to one of the least visited countries. Currently, Greenland only sees about 100,000 visitors by air each year.
