Airline brings back direct flights connecting Nunavut, Greenland
An Ottawa stop will also be part of new plan scheduled to begin in June 2024
An Air Greenland Dash-8 is seen at the Iqaluit airport in a 2012 file photo. The airline announced it will provide flights between Nuuk, Greenland and Iqaluit, beginning in summer 2024. The company used to have a Nuuk-Iqaluit route, but stopped providing that service in 2015. (File photo)
Inuk artist Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory says she’s “excited” about Air Greenland’s announcement of direct flights between Nuuk, Greenland and Iqaluit that will start in June 2024.
A Greenlandic Inuk based in Iqaluit, she said word of the new flights spread quickly among her family members back in Greenland.
“They kept tagging me on Facebook and saying they were coming to visit,” she said in an interview Wednesday.
Air Greenland announced this week it will provide direct flights between Nuuk and Iqaluit. A partnership with Canadian North will allow passengers to make connections from Iqaluit to either Ottawa or Kuujjuaq.
The direct flights are expected to begin in June 2024 and be available through October 2024, the company said in a news release issued Monday.
In 2012, Air Greenland began an 11-week trial service between Iqaluit and Nuuk. The 105-minute flights cost about $748 one-way. The service was ultimately discontinued due to low ridership, the airline said at the time, with capacity rarely reaching 50 per cent.
Last September, Bathory traveled to the Nuuk International Film Festival. She said total travel time, there and back, took six days and cost $7,200.
The 825-kilometre flight to Greenland from Iqaluit followed a circuitous route, from Iqaluit to Ottawa, then Toronto, then Reykjavík, Iceland before finally landing in Nuuk three days later.
Bathory said direct flights will mean a lot to families like hers, and will be beneficial for sharing cross-cultural heritage between Inuit communities in Canada and Greenland.
She noted a recent initiative to bring Nunavummiut to Greenland to teach Greenlanders how to make amauti for carrying their babies. The practice has been in decline there.
“Most people use prams,” Bathory said.
The cost of the project was $40,000, she said. Having direct flights available will mean more opportunities for cultural exchanges like that.
In announcing the new flights, Canadian North interim president and CEO Shelly De Caria said the airline is “committed to making the Arctic more accessible, inviting all to discover the unique wonders it holds.”
Air Greenland CEO Jacob Nitter Sørensen said “we believe this will lay a stronger foundation to bolster the many existing business, political and cultural ties” between Canada and Greenland.
In a news release Monday, Air Greenland said the new routes will depart once a week on Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. local time and take approximately two hours.
One return route will include Ottawa, Iqaluit and Nuuk, while the other will include Kuujjuaq, Iqaluit and Nuuk.
Service will be seasonal, from June to October starting next year. Air Greenland’s release noted the service period could be expanded depending on demand.
“Personally, I look forward to hopefully enjoy the direct flight next year,” Denmark’s ambassador to Canada, Hanne Fugl Eskjaer, said in an email.
“We know that there is a great desire for closer co-operation between Nunavut and Greenland, and to ensure dialogue it is natural to open a route to our neighbours to the west,” Nitter Sørensen said.
All parties on both sides of Davis Strait should start marketing now to fill that plane. There is no one market that will fill it – it will take a little from many markets to make it a success. Tour groups, independent tourists, film crews, mining exploration types, oil and gas people, crew changes for fisheries boats, exchanges of bureaucrats between the 2 governments, political visits, student exchanges, journalists, artists, writers, photographers, hunters. The airline needs to be careful with pricing – make it worthwhile for people originating in the south to travel to Greenland via Iqaluit, not via Iceland. When we (Chamber of Commerce, etc) lobbied for this route many years ago, our pitch was not that this is a route from Greenland to Iqaluit. Rather it is a route from Greenland THROUGH Iqaluit to Ottawa from where connections to the rest of North America can be easily made. It would be wonderful if next summer’s planes were so full that the route became, not just a summer route, but a permanent one.
For the flights to get used a bunch of initiatives need to be created.
Cultural exchange programs where Greenland residents come and learn the traditions and culture programs offered in Nunavut and visa versa, Nunavut residents travel to learn Greenland culture.
Allowing Greenland residents to enroll in the cultural school in Clyde River would be beneficial. While allowing Nunavut residents to enroll in the Greenland University would also be beneficial.
We need to increase trading and business’ partnerships between Nunavut and Greenland.
I would love to travel to Greenland one day but as a regular Inuk living pay cheque to pay cheque, struggling to keep food on the table for my kids I can’t even afford to fly to southern Canada for a vacation.
Hotels, meals, airfare for two people for a week will run me about $15,000 and honestly I would rather purchase a snowmobile to help me feed my family if I could.
Not sure what kind of luxury holiday down south yout used to. $7500 per person is insane, unless you’re in Grise fiord. Eat grocery store food, stay in 2 star hotel not downtown, take public transit not taxi or uber.. and it shouldn’t cost more than $100 a day per person
Pond Inlet to Ottawa return for two on Saver fare $5,300 full fare $10,000 Just airfare alone will be 1/3 to 2/3s of the $15,000 budget for two.
Accommodation will rung $2000 for the week and that does not include meals.
Shopping for the family because the 4 kids need school shoes that will last the year and clothing because there may be nothing locally all adds up. Not to mention entertainment, going to the spa, getting nails done, getting a hair cut, going out to dinner, red lobster, the keg, enjoying a movie at the theater, taking Uber or a taxi or even renting a vehicle because you don’t want to waste time as you have to hit up Walmart, home depot, Hunting and fishing store to to get some new gear if not cheep either.
It is a shopping mission mostly with some entertainment on the side. Who goes on vacation for a week to waste most of the time waiting on buses all day?
Hunter; this airfare is just a greed airlines are adopting, scams the northerners and it always work. most of the northern business are scamming for quick buck, I have yet to see any businesses and airlines operating from the goodness of their hearts. Hotels, airlines, retailers. Even your local weed dealer is scamming you, they’re all scamming/ripping.
$15k is not even on the high end (its a minimum of 12K for 5 just in Flights and getting Aeroplan is not great with Canadian North either), why do you think so fee people can afford to go on holidays as a family in the south. also the reason Medical travel is holiday time for many.
It’s not easy to find precise figures, but it should be possible to operate at a cost of less than 30¢ per seat-mile — Air Canada’s was less than half that, not including fuel.. The distance is just over 500 miles, and Air Greenland’s DHC-8 Q200 carries 37 passengers. Assuming a little over 50% capacity, operation cost is about $280 per passenger, one way. Add on depreciation, profit, etc. and there is still no reason for a $748 fare. The distance from Montreal to Windsor is slightly farther, and those fares are as low as $213, although costs are lower with bigger planes and fewer empty seats.
your right it should not have been $748 even in 2012, they have not said the prices yet… and that will be a big factor if i buy a ticket. but I would not be surprised if they try sell the Iq -Nuuk portion for double that.
The difference with Air Canada and a smaller airline like Canadian North is that Air Canada makes all its money from business class seats, expensive last minute seats and refundable corporate fares. These seats sell for $1000+ on domestic flights, while the cheap seat fare buckets are used to recoup some costs but are usually sold at a loss. The economics of airlines are super complicated. Hard to believe this route will survive more than a couple summers, unless it is subsidized.
But Air Canada do not have a monopoly on every route they fly. Canadian North does. Yes, airline economics are complicated but it seems CN rather fly empty planes than lowering the price and filling the planes. Even Porter (tiny airline) has a promo every now and then. Calm Air has better business practice than CN.
I’ve been out of the business for over a decade but I doubt if your seat cost is even close. Not sure about the DH8 numbers but when they were operating the Dash 7 they were restricted to just over 50% capacity due to payload/range, and IIRC the ATR-42 was just slightly better. Remember that you need to have enough fuel for your alternate plus 45 minutes.
Most days you’re not going to get your max 37 passengers, especially with northern baggage – and you can’t leave baggage behind on a once a week flight. Max is probably anywhere from 24 to 30 so you’re down 20% to 30% to start.
For other costs you’re going to see a small airline like Air Greenland or Canadian North be far far higher than Air Canada. Economy of scale really does matter in the airline business. Buying or leasing aircraft, aircraft utilization, insurance, salaries, reservations systems and costs, fuel contracts, training, simulators, maintenence, spares, everything across the board will cost much more.
Air Canada and it’s affiliates gets probably triple the hours on their DH8 aircraft. Air Canada reservations cost is likely 1/50th the cost Air Greenland pays. It all adds up. Operating in the north is likely twice as expensive as operating down south.
Then, you need at least $1000 reserve to go home incase your flight gets delayed or cancelled out of Iqaluit. Hotel rooms are not cheep, taxi fare is not cheep either. And when you get home you have to purchase $500 worth of groceries for the week because the kids ate up all the groceries you bought before leaving.
and you had to leave your kids behind…
Use credit card with flight insurance and they will refund all these fees if flight is cancelled due to bad weather
I can’t wait to head over this summer! Such a beautiful place and it’s such a eye opener how a well run government is supposed to work, the infrastructure is amazing over there and to top it all of majority of the employed are Greenlanders, go figure.
More Nunavummiut need to travel there and experience how it can be.
Even the taxi drivers are local. It’s amazing!
I went to Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat ) a few times in the 90’s once for vacation and a few times for work and I would encourage people to go there, it’s beautiful and very interesting. At the time there was initially a direct flight to Nuuk via a turboprop but in 1994 they (First Air and Grønland Fly) had a jet service (if I remember well, it was a 727 and I boarded the first flight end of September or early October 1994) to Kangerlussuaq and we had to transfer on a turboprop to Nuuk as the runway there is too short for larger jet planes. Yet, it was much faster and convenient than going around though Denmark or Iceland. It makes so much sense to have better connections between our two countries and foster improved relationship between Inuit Nunagat and Kalaallit Nunaat through exchange of expertise and experiences.