Winnipeg business starting Canada-Greenland route

MONTREAL — Private business is stepping in to fill the need for air service between Canada and Greenland.

The Winnipeg-based Great Canadian Travel Company will offer flights this summer to Sisimiut, Greenland, from Edmonton, Ottawa, Montreal and Iqaluit, in conjunction with a Sisimiut cruise operator, Arctic Umiaq Line.

The flights are scheduled to run from mid-June and last until the end of August.

“We’d have to look at it after that time. It’s the first year, and we want to try it out,” said Melanie Woodward of the Great Canadian Travel Company.

But Woodward isn’t worried about filling the twice-weekly flights to Greenland.

The response to news of these flights, passed around Greenland and Canada by word-of-mouth, is already generating bookings for the renewed service.

“I’m positive we can fill it,” Woodward said.

The flights will run Mondays and Tuesdays, and bring passengers from the South to Iqaluit via regular First Air flights and then over to Sisimiut on Air Nunavut’s 11-passenger King Air.

From Ottawa or Montreal to Sisimiut, round-trip tickets will cost $1,610. From Edmonton, tickets will cost $2,074. The round-trip fare from Iqaluit will be $939.

The tickets are valid for a one-week stay although passengers can also opt for more expensive one-way tickets or longer stays.

Travellers between Canada and Greenland welcome these renewed flights.

“I’m already planning,” said Kuujjuaq resident Ida Nassak. “That’s much better than absolutely nothing.”

At the end of December, Nassak will travel for three days to reach her boyfriend in Aasiaat, Greenland.

Along the way, she’ll change planes in Montreal, Paris, Copenhagen and Kangerlussuaq. She’ll repeat the long jouney at the end of her trip to return back to Kuujjuaq.

The round-trip ticket from Montreal to Kangerlussuaq alone cost her more than $2,000.

The financial and logistical hurdles in planning this visit to Aasiaat have also been frustrating, despite contacts through e-mail and telephone.

“If it’s not accessible physically, it feels like a world away,” Nassak said.

However, the new summer schedule for flights won’t help anyone wishing to see the Arctic Winter Games in Nuuk in March.

Although, in January Greenlandair may decide to send its rented ATR-42 aircraft on a regular run between Nuuk and Iqaluit.

This show of interest from business comes at a time when some observers say the Nunavut and Greenland Home Rule governments have been dragging their heels on finding a solution to the lack of service between the two neighbouring Inuit regions.

Meanwhile, a task force under the Arctic Council has been looking at how to improve circumpolar travel. The Circumpolar Infrastructure Task Force will make recommendations to the Arctic Council ministers again next year in Finland.

The task force’s preliminary report details how travel around the circumpolar world is still near to impossible without making many detours to the South.

Air travel through Russia and between Alaska and Siberia is difficult because of the dispersed population, limited points of entry, and visa requirements.

Flying between Alaska and the Eastern Arctic is tedious, too, and generally requires detours to the South.

While the air link between Canada and Greenland has been completely broken, there are two weekly flights from Greenland to Iceland and four to Denmark.

Air connections in northern Scandinavia still lack north-to-north service. The only way to travel by air from Tromsø, Norway, to Rovaniemi, Finland, is still to fly south through Oslo and Helsinki.