United flights give travellers another option to get to Greenland
New competition will have ‘no impact’ on Air Greenland’s plans to continue direct Iqaluit-Nuuk flights: airline
Air Greenland says United Airlines’ recently announced direct flights connecting New York City and Nuuk, Greenland will have no affect on its operations for the 2025 season. (File photo by Arty Sarkisian)
United Airlines will give North Americans another option to get to Greenland and give Air Greenland and Canadian North competition for their direct Iqaluit-Nuuk service that took off this year.
Earlier this month, United announced new twice-weekly direct flights from New York City to Nuuk, Greenland starting on June 14, 2025. The flights will operate during the summer season, a company news release said.
It’s one of eight new routes around the world that United announced.
It puts the American company in competition with Air Greenland and Canadian North for passengers flying between the capital of Greenland and New York, Ottawa or Montreal.
“United Airlines’ newly announced route will have no impact on Air Greenland’s route to Iqaluit,” Aminnguaq Dahl Petrussen, an Air Greenland spokesperson, said in an email on Monday.
The 2025 seasonal schedule connecting Iqaluit to Nuuk once a week has already been finalized and will begin on April 2, 2025, Petrussen added.
In October 2023, Air Greenland announced the reintroduction of direct flights between Nuuk and Iqaluit. A partnership with Canadian North allows passengers to make connections from Iqaluit to either Ottawa, Montreal or Kuujjuaq.
The first flight took off in June 2024.
That first flight’s passengers included tourists from various part of southern Canada and the United States who used Iqaluit as a hub to get to Greenland.
Prior to the reintroduction of Air Greenland’s service, flights between Iqaluit and Nuuk could take as long as three days, because planes had to fly to Europe first. Air Greenland’s new route reduced travel time to two hours. It is unclear how long direct flights from New York City to Nuuk will take.
As of Monday, a flight from New York City to Nuuk could not be booked on the United Airlines’ booking site.
United Airlines’ new route is subject to government approval, the company’s announcement said.
Canadian North and United Airlines could not be reached for comment.
This route will kill the Iqaluit-Nuuk route. I’d give it one more season. If you live in a major American or southern Canadian city it is still usually cheaper and faster (and more interesting) in most cases to fly through Iceland to Nuuk unless you are traveling from Ottawa or maybe Montreal-Kujjuaq in some cases due to the time of departure from Ottawa (8am) and the long four hour layover in Iqaluit. Now it will be even easier to fly to Greenland through New York. For Greenlanders, very few if any are going to want to travel for tourism to Iqaluit or Ottawa when instead they can fly direct to a real international airport (Newark) and skip an expensive overnight at the Ottawa airport and then pay an outrageously expensive fare for an awful, unreliable domestic flight on Air Canada or Westjet to travel onward.
100% true and given that you can fly to really anywhere in the world with a large selection of airline carriers from Newark, and way more interesting to have a layover in NYC than Ottawa or Iqaluit. The Iqaluit to Nuuk might still support “cultural exchange” but it will be a minuscule market. Now what would even be more interesting though will never happen, if United decided to have a “stopover” in Iqaluit on the way to Nuuk (return). The market is too small to sustain it but dang, I’d like a layover in NYC as oppose to Ottawa!
Only use for Greenland is to those fishing jobs travelling from Nunavut to Greenland for fishing jobs. Summer time only.
United will bury Air Greenland and Canadian North in no time flat. This is interesting development that reflects the US’s increasing interest in Greenland as a strategic military and economic partner … only the beginning.
Maybe trump will buy greenland like he said he would