MURDO MORRISON / KANGERLUSSUAQ, GREENLAND
Greenlanders are out to change international misconceptions about their gateway airport
An abandoned US air base in one of the world's bleakest locations, with few facilities and likely to be fog-bound, snowed-in or battered by Arctic gales. That is the erroneous image many airlines have of Greenland's main airport, Kangerlussuaq, according to Palle Luckow Friis, its air traffic control manager. It is why they opt instead, he says, for what they regard as the more civilised North Atlantic havens of Canada's maritime provinces or Iceland's Keflavic for their extended-range twinjet operations (ETOPS) alternates. "They think we're all a bit primitive up here," he adds.
But it is a view Luckow Friis is keen to alter. Greenland's airport authority has launched a publicity drive to convince more airlines of the advantages offered at the airport, better known by its Danish name of Søndre Strømfjord or Søndrestrom. These include a 2,815m (9,240ft) runway, a 400-bed hotel, a Category 8 fire-fighting and rescue service, and air-traffic control licensed by Denmark's civil aviation authority (Self-governing Greenland is part of the kingdom of Denmark).
But Kangerlussuaq's biggest plus is location. It sits on one of Greenland's few flat expanses on a dried glacial river bed at the head of a 150km- (90 mile-) long fjord enclosed on three sides by mountains. It means that - while 50km inside the Arctic Circle where temperatures can plunge to -40ºC (-40ºF) in winter - it is rarely troubled by snow, fog or strong winds, and the average speed of the headwind up the runway from the fjord is a benign 6kt (11km/h). The country's other coastal airports, including the capital, Nuuk, are frequently shut because of bad weather.
The uninhabited 2km-wide plain was an obvious location when the US Army air force was scouting for a strategic North Atlantic staging-post in 1941. Built in weeks - with the blessing of Denmark, then under German occupation - Bluie West 8 opened before the USA entered the war. It was one of several US military bases and weather stations in Greenland. They left after 50 years, handing the airport - with its civilian passenger terminal and workers' village on one side of the runway, and military buildings on the other - to the Greenland government for a token $1.
Kangerlussuaq is Greenland's main gateway airport and home to around 400 Danes and Greenlanders, all connected with the airport or the country's airline Greenlandair, in which Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) has a 37.5% stake. Greenlandair and SAS fly daily to Copenhagen using a Boeing 757 and 767 respectively.
Though Kangerlussuaq promotes itself as a destination in its own right - thousands come in the summer to check out the wildlife and glaciers of Greenland's spectacular interior - more than 90% of the 100,000 passengers who arrive at the airport each year are bound for elsewhere.
There are few roads in Greenland and none connecting the main settlements, so six Greenlandair de Havilland Dash 7s provide feeder services to 10 regional airports, eight of which are on the west coast, where most of the population lives. Six of these airports have been built in the past four years as part of a $120 million investment to transform the island's air transport infrastructure. The communities on Greenland's southern coast are served by Greenlandair's Sikorsky S-61 helicopter, which links with Greenlandair's weekly service between Copenhagen and the southern hub of Narsarsuaq.
Pros and cons
The Dash 7 flights from Kangerlussuaq fit in around the Greenlandair and SAS Boeings. The airlines compete twice a week on the Copenhagen route - their aircraft arriving within an hour of each other. Because there is room for only three aircraft on the apron, pilots and passengers are often in the position of having to queue on the runway before they can disembark. Kangerlussuaq handles at least 40 flights a day, though the total reached a record of more than 100 last summer, when a flying club, en route to Canada, came in to refuel.
The US military still uses it as a fuel stop, as do companies delivering business and general aviation aircraft across the Atlantic. Replacing the 1970s passenger terminal with a new facility on the apron south of the runway, on the former military side of the airport, would be one solution to congestion. However, it would require around $7 million in investment.
As the airport is only open 12h a day Monday to Friday, airlines pay to have the facilities on standby during the night or weekends. The airport makes around $400,000 a year in this way, but this figure could be doubled, according to airport office manager Per Lovin Jensen.
Luckow Friis believes ignorance of Kangerlussuaq's facilities is not the sole reason only one of the 400 or so aircraft which fly over or close to Greenland every day requests out-of-hours opening. Hesuspects many twinjets list Kangerlussuaq as their alternate on flight plans without informing the airport - something that could put safety at risk if aircraft divert at short notice and the runway is not cleared of ice, and emergency crews are not ready.
One of Kangerlussuaq's weaknesses is medical facilities. There is no resident doctor and the former US military hospital lies empty. Though several fire-fighters are trained paramedics, the nearest hospital is 150km away on the coast at Sisimiut. Ill or injured passengers can be flown to Nuuk or Sisimiut, or doctors brought in. A Greenlandair Raytheon Beech Super King Air 200 is on standby for emergencies.
One of the most telling facts about Kangerlussuaq's status as an ETOPS alternative came on 11 September when the USA closed its airspace and not one aircraft of 197 crossing or cleared to cross the North Atlantic westbound inquired about diverting to Greenland. By contrast, 85 aircraft are understood to have landed in Gander and St John's in Newfoundland.
With ETOPS likely to become less of an issue, the Greenland airport authorities are aware that they may have to find other revenue. The country's tourism potential could open it up to more airline services. Greenlandair wants to replace its six Dash 7s with Bombardier Q300/400s or ATR 42/72s, partly with a view to launching routes to northern Canada and Iceland (Flight International, 4-10 December, 2001).
The up-market charter business also offers long-term promise - British Airways' Aerospatiale/BAe Concordes have landed at Kangerlussuaq several times.
Perhaps the most ambitious suggestion, however, is that of Luckow Friis, who sees Kangerlussuaq's sprawling under-used southern apron as ideal for a freight hub. Carriers, he believes, could consolidate cargo traffic between Europe and the USA, and transfer crews and aircraft - hearkening back to the airport's original wartime use as a mid-Atlantic staging-post.
Source: Flight International