Nuuk-Iqaluit summer air link to take flight

After many efforts to re-establish an air link between the two countries, Air Greenland announced plans this week to operate a trial route between Nuuk and Iqaluit starting in June 2012. (FILE PHOTO)

An Iqaluit-Nuuk air link will finally take flight, after Air Greenland announced plans this week to re-launch the once-popular route.

Travellers in Nunavut and Greenland may once again make a scheduled flight across Davis Strait in less than two hours.

The airline is giving the Nunavut-Greenland link a trial run starting in June, 2012, when they will operate twice-a-week flights between Iqaluit and Nuuk on Mondays and Fridays.

The 11-week run will operate until Sept. 3, said a Jan. 18 Air Greenland press release.

Air Greenland spokesman Christian Keldsen says the air link will cater mostly to business people who work in oil and mineral exploration.

“Accordingly, we have designed the schedule for the new route to ensure same-day connections to a large number of destinations in Canada, (such as) Ottawa, Vancouver, St. Johns and Goose Bay,” Keldsen said in the release.

In time, Air Greenland will consider extending the season, he said, providing there is sufficient demand.

Passengers will travel the Nuuk-Iqaluit route in a Dash-8 aircraft capable seating 34 passengers.

The flying time is one hour and 45 minutes, while the price of a one-way Nuuk-Iqaluit ticket will be approximately $748 CAD.

Officials on either side of Davis Strait recently stepped up a campaign to re-establish a scheduled link between Nunavut and Greenland that last operated in 2001, when Air Greenland and First Air stopped their weekly jet service between Iqaluit and Kangerlussuaq.

That’s because the Nunavut and Greenland governments have expressed interest in increasing bureaucratic and cultural exchanges, as well as improving access to Iqaluit’s Arctic College and Ilisimatusarfik, Greenland’s university. The two institutions that are working together towards a new Arctic nursing diploma.

Air Greenland was scheduled to begin a route between Nuuk and Iqaluit in 2010, but those plans were dropped.

An earlier attempt to establish jet service between Greenland and the United States in 2008 also failed.