NUNAVUT
The Air Greenland route between Nuuk and Iqaluit has officially been suspended for this year.

The company's chief commercial officer, Christian Keldsen, told Nunavut News/North the decision had been made last year, but a final attempt to save it recently fell through.

"Both the Greenlandic and Nunavut governments wanted us to keep going," he said by phone from Nuuk. "But there's no financial support for the route, no background to keep it running."

Keldsen said the company never determined how much financial support would be needed to keep the three-year old route running because they didn't want to be in a position to require subsidies.

"We just want to do commercially-viable routes," he said.

Capacity on the Dash-8 planes was described as just breaking even for Air Greenland.

"We could make more money using the same capacity elsewhere," Keldsen said of the turboprop airliners, which were quickly reassigned.

Since the company did not set up a base at the Iqaluit airport, no jobs were lost as a result of the route suspension. Still, Keldsen expressed disappointment regarding how many seats weren't filled, due to the lack of predicted oil and mineral activity, or increased political connection between the two areas.

The Air Greenland executive was careful to emphasize the route was never based on tourism, only business travel for corporate and government passengers, after the company's prior analysis of the volume of existing traffic.

"We knew there was a demand with 250 charters a year," he said.

The first year of the project was also filled with many reunions of people who hadn't seen each other in decades, said Keldsen.

As for the future of the route, Keldsen said the company is open to another specific time period they could offer the flights.

"If there is a need, from say, August to October instead, that would be something we'd be open to discussion with clients and stakeholders," he said.

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