The air traffic station in Nuuk was a shed on the Harbor. (1964) |
Catalina and Twin Otters in Kangerlussuaq |
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SAS DC7 in Kangerlussuaq to Los Angeles 1962 |
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En passenger boat from the Catalinae is docking, Nuuk |
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Bagage from a Catalina is unloaded, Nuuk i 1964 |
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Nuuk in 1960 |
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S61 arriving Nuuk 10 April 1965 |
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Qaqortoq heliport, 1965 |
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| Qaqortoq 1965 |
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Pilot Erik Nilsson, pilot is being picked up by the bus. Nuuk i 1965 |
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managing customers. Nuuk 1966. To the left, ground Inspector, Ole Dam |
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S61 in the hangar, Nuuk 1965 |
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Maniitsoq, 1965 |
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The hotel in Kangerlussuaq, 1962 |
Greenlandair 1960-69
Take-off for Greenlandic flights with passengers
The passenger terminal was a hut on the quay and the runway was in the middle of the harbour basin when Greenlandair brought Greenland into the age of air travel at the start of the 1960s. The aircraft were chartered Canadian Catalinas which could land both on water and on the runways at Kangerlussuaq and Narsarsuaq. In the towns along Greenland’s coast the aircraft were moored to a buoy in the harbour basin and passengers were sailed ashore in one of the town’s “flight boats”. It was the beta version of aviation – but it worked!
Passenger flights between Greenlandic towns were the culmination of the colossal changes Greenland had experienced since the Second World War – and at the same time a prerequisite for speeding up progress.
A Greenlandic solution
Greenland Air was founded on November 7th, 1960 by SAS and Kryolitselskabet Øresund (the Cryolite Company, which at that time operated the mine at Ivittuut) and in 1962 Greenland’s National Council and the Royal Greenland Trading Company became shareholders on an equal footing. The national airline company was established by the financial heavyweights of the time.
At first, the purpose was to ensure that Greenland acquired the job of supplying the four American radar stations which had been built in a chain across the country – two of them way out on the inlandic ice. Straight away, a contract was entered into with the American Air Force, a DC-4 was chartered in Iceland, two S-55 helicopters were chartered in Canada – and supply flights to the new radar stations began.
Thousands in the air
Two years later Greenlandair started to fly with passengers, using both the Catalina and the Otter, which in addition to landing wheels had skis and could land on snow and ice. Seen with modern eyes the capacity was limited – the Catalina had room for 20 passengers at most. The Otter could take eight to nine passengers. Nevertheless, Greenlandair already had 12-14,000 passengers per year by the mid 1960s Most of them flew to and from Kangerlussuaq, where SAS had opened its route to Denmark. .
The Catalina aircraft was a stop-gap solution and an accident in Nuuk in 1962, where 15 people died during a landing in the harbour highlighted the need for a more robust alternative. In a country without any other runways than the two American-built runways in Kangerlussuaq and Narsarsuaq there was only one solution: the modern helicopter!
The first traffic trainees
In the spring of 1965 three S-61 helicopters decorated in Greenlandair’s red-white colours arrived directly from the Sikorsky factories in the USA, and as the first airline in the world, they started long-distance passenger flights with helicopters to remote regions. Heliports were built in six towns. Greenland’s future was ready for take-off.
From the very beginning, the vision was that Greenlandair should not only link the country together with a modern infrastructure; it should also generate training and work places. In the early years, young Greenlanders were sent to train with SAS in Denmark, but Greenlandair started training its own traffic assistants already in 1966.
