Qaarsut Airport ( kl, Mittarfik Qaarsut) is an

airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. Airports usually consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surfa ...

Qaarsut Qaarsut (old spelling: ''Kaersut'') is a settlement in Avannaata municipality, in northwestern Greenland. It is situated on the northeastern shore of the Nuussuaq Peninsula. It had 174 inhabitants in 2020. History The first coal mine in Greenlan ...

, a settlement on the

Nuussuaq Peninsula Nuussuaq Peninsula (, old spelling: ''Nûgssuaq'') is a large (180x48 km) peninsula in western Greenland. Geography The waters around the peninsula are that of Baffin Bay. To the south and southwest the peninsula is bounded by Disko Bay, ...

Avannaata Avannaata (, da, Det Nordlige, lit=The Northern) is a municipality of Greenland created on 1 January 2018 from the bulk of the former Qaasuitsup municipality. It encompasses an area of 522,700 km2 and has 10,726 inhabitants. Geography In ...

municipality in northwestern

Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland ...

. It is a primary airport with a gravel runway, capable of serving

STOL A short takeoff and landing (STOL) aircraft is a conventional fixed-wing aircraft that has short runway requirements for takeoff and landing. Many STOL-designed aircraft also feature various arrangements for use on airstrips with harsh condi ...

aircraft of

Air Greenland Air Greenland A/S (formerly named Grønlandsfly), also known as Greenlandair, is the flag carrier airline of Greenland, owned by the Greenlandic Government. It operates a fleet of 32 aircraft, including 1 airliner used for transatlantic and ch ...

in all seasons. There is a small cafeteria in the tiny arrivals/departures hall. It is connected by a gravel road to Qaarsut and is northwest of

Uummannaq Uummannaq is a town in the Avannaata municipality, in central-western Greenland. With 1,407 inhabitants in 2020, it is the eighth-largest town in Greenland, and is home to the country's most northerly ferry terminal. Founded in 1763 as Omenak, t ...

Overview

Qaarsut-airport-air-greenland-bell212-dash7

Qaarsut airport was inaugurated on 29 September 1999, with the purpose of serving the much larger neighboring town of

, southeast of the airport, located on an island of the same name in the south-central part of

Uummannaq Fjord Uummannaq Fjord is a large fjord system in the northern part of western Greenland, the largest after Kangertittivaq fjord in eastern Greenland. It has a roughly south-east to west-north-west orientation, emptying into the Baffin Bay in the nor ...

. The island−merely away in a direct line across Sarqarput Strait−is too small and rocky to host an airport of sufficient size to accommodate

fixed-wing aircraft A fixed-wing aircraft is a heavier-than-air flying machine, such as an airplane, which is capable of flight using wings that generate lift caused by the aircraft's forward airspeed and the shape of the wings. Fixed-wing aircraft are dist ...

of Air Greenland. The airport thus functions as a mini-hub for Uummannaq, with the terminal building labelled 'Uummannaq', regardless of its actual location, registration, documentation, and existing booking systems. The decision to build the airport in Qaarsut was intended to solve the bottleneck on the

Ilulissat Ilulissat, formerly Jakobshavn or Jacobshaven, is the municipal seat and largest town of the Avannaata municipality in western Greenland, located approximately north of the Arctic Circle. With the population of 4,670 as of 2020, it is the thi ...

-Uummannaq route (164 km), until then operated by Air Greenland with

Sikorsky S-61N The Sikorsky S-61L and S-61N are civil variants of the SH-3 Sea King military helicopter. It was developed and produced by the American helicopter manufacturer Sikorsky Aircraft. The commercial version of the Sea King was developed during the ...

helicopters. Acquired in 1965, they are the oldest machines in the fleet of the airline, still in operation year-round in southern Greenland and during wintertime in the

Disko Bay Disko Bay ( kl, Qeqertarsuup tunua; da, DiskobugtenChristensen, N.O. & al.Elections in Greenland. ''Arctic Circular'', Vol. 4 (1951), pp. 83–85. Op. cit. "Northern News". ''Arctic'', Vol. 5, No. 1 (Mar 1952), pp. 58–59.) is a large ...

area south of Qaarsut. The bottleneck problem is considered unsolved, since passengers must still be shuttled between the airport and

Uummannaq Heliport Uummannaq Heliport is a heliport in Uummannaq, a town located on Uummannaq Island in Avannaata municipality in northwestern Greenland. There are no facilities in the heliport. Airlines and destinations Air Greenland operates government contra ...

. The primary function of the airport as a local hub has

unintended consequences In the social sciences, unintended consequences (sometimes unanticipated consequences or unforeseen consequences) are outcomes of a purposeful action that are not intended or foreseen. The term was popularised in the twentieth century by Ameri ...

for communities of northern Greenland. All flights to

Qaanaaq Airport Qaanaaq Airport ( kl, Mittarfik Qaanaaq) is an airport located northwest of Qaanaaq, a settlement in the Avannaata municipality in northern Greenland. It was established in 1991 to serve Qaanaaq and neighboring communities because Thule Air B ...

include a stopover in

Upernavik Airport Upernavik Airport ( kl, Mittarfik Upernavik) is an airport located northeast of Upernavik, a town in Avannaata municipality in northwestern Greenland, capable of serving STOL aircraft. It is used as a transfer airport for passenger/cargo traffic ...

. In order to avoid an overnight layover in

Upernavik Upernavik (Kalaallisut: "Springtime Place") is a small town in the Avannaata municipality in northwestern Greenland, located on a small island of the same name. With 1,092 inhabitants as of 2020, it is the twelfth-largest town in Greenland. It c ...

, all

Qaanaaq Qaanaaq (), formerly known as Thule or New Thule, is the main town in the northern part of the Avannaata municipality in northwestern Greenland. It is one of the northernmost towns in the world. The inhabitants of Qaanaaq speak the local Inukt ...

-bound passengers must travel via Qaarsut. Flights on the Ilulissat-Qaarsut route are often sold out, which given a single weekly flight to Qaanaaq leaves passengers unable to travel to or from the northern communities, resulting in resentment. As of 2017, it is possible to travel Ilulissat–Qaanaaq or opposite within a day with only one plane change in Upernavik without touching Qaarsut. Proposals to close the airport have to date been rejected.

Sunk costs In economics and business decision-making, a sunk cost (also known as retrospective cost) is a cost that has already been incurred and cannot be recovered. Sunk costs are contrasted with '' prospective costs'', which are future costs that may be ...

, tourism potential for northwestern and northern Greenland, and the 2010 reinvigoration of the

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the econom ...

activities in

Maamorilik Maamorilik (old spelling: ''Mârmorilik'' or ''Maarmorilik'', also ''Black Angel Mine'') is a mining site in the Avannaata municipality in northwestern Greenland. Holding resources of zinc, iron, lead, and silver, the mine is long, with its entr ...

northeast of Ukkusissat, as well as on Appat Island in the futurekanukoka.gl
−are the primary reasons for keeping the airport open.

Airlines and destinations

References

{{authority control Airports in Greenland Airports in the Arctic Airports established in 1999 Uummannaq Fjord 1999 establishments in Greenland