Nuuk Airport (; , previously Godthåb lufthavn) is an airport serving Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. The airport is a technical base and focus city for Air Greenland, the flag carrier airline of Greenland, linking the capital with several towns in western and south-western part of the country, including the airline hub at Kangerlussuaq Airport. With connections to Iceland, Nuuk Airport is also one of six international airports in Greenland but serves only destinations within Greenland and Iceland. International connections are made with flights to either Keflavík International Airport in Iceland or Kangerlussuaq Airport.
In the early 1960s, seaplanes of the newly established Air Greenland landed in Nuuk Port. In 1965, the airline invested in developing a more robust fleet based on the large Sikorsky S-61 helicopter, which continued to serve the town for the next four decades, even after the construction of an airport in Nuuk capable of serving the short takeoff and landing (STOL) de Havilland Canada Dash 7 aircraft, which have been predominant since the 1970s.
The airport was constructed to serve the largest town in Greenland, yet due to space constraints at the location in a mountainous area and problems with the weather, it is unable to service large airliners or flights reaching Denmark or other countries, except for Iceland. Sometimes, in connection with events, aircraft for VIP flights are chartered which unable to reach Nuuk, a change to a small local aircraft (normally at Kangerlussuaq Airport) is always needed in those cases. A large expansion of the airport has been controversial due to the approach near the urbanized area of the outlying districts of Nuuk, although the issue continues to be a subject of internal debate in Greenland.
A new international airport is slated for completion in 2024.
Geography
The airport is located northeast of Nuuk Centrum. The former suburbs of Nuuk, such as Nuussuaq, Quassussuup Tungaa, and Qinngorput, incorporated into the town in the last decade, have brought the city closer to the airport. As of 2010 the airport is within walking distance of the nearest continuously inhabited area, its runway approximately from the University of Greenland campus. There is an alpine ski course only from the airport terminal.
History
Seaplane era
In the early 1960s, after the establishment of Air Greenland on 7 November 1960 as Grønlandsfly, Nuuk was served exclusively by the PBY Catalina flying boat, with the aircraft using the waterways of the Nuuk Port as a landing site. In 1962 a PBY Catalina crashed near the port, killing 15 people on board.
Helicopter era
The tragedy was one of the factors leading to the decision to invest in a helicopter fleet. The Sikorsky S-61N machines—still in use in 2010—proved to be a more reliable mode of transport for the city, providing exclusive service for the Nuuk city for more than a decade—from the purchase date in 1965 until the late 1970s.
Even in the later era of the fixed-wing, turboprop plane domination, the S-61N helicopters continued to link Nuuk with the smaller town of Paamiut, until the airport was built there in 2007, replacing the old heliport.
Regional airport network
Nuuk Airport was built in 1979, when the then newly formed home rule government decided to create a network of the STOL-capable domestic airports. The airport in the largest city in Greenland was a priority for the government, followed by Kulusuk Airport in Kulusuk in south-eastern Greenland, and Ilulissat Airport in Ilulissat, the largest town in the Disko Bay region of western Greenland. This constituted the first such wave of network expansion.
Network expansion
It was not until the 1990s that the network experienced another spurt of large-scale growth, when the airports in the remaining larger towns were built: Sisimiut Airport in Sisimiut and Maniitsoq Airport in Maniitsoq in central-western Greenland, Aasiaat Airport in the Disko Bay region, Upernavik Airport in Upernavik in northwestern Greenland, and Qaarsut Airport, an airport in Qaarsut, a settlement in the Uummannaq Fjord region; the airport serving both the village and the larger town of Uummannaq, located on the rocky Uummannaq Island.
2000-onwards
The first international flights from Nuuk Airport were to Iqaluit in Nunavut, Canada. This connection was closed 13 years later, and for years afterwards international flights to Greenland were limited to Kangerlussuaq Airport in central western Greenland, to the north of Nuuk, an airport inherited from the U.S. Air Force when the former Sondrestrom Air Base was handed over to the then home rule government on 30 September 1992.