Greenland is dictated by the
weather—and in over two months living here, I have seen many
examples of this firsthand. Sure, you can cite examples of going on
the sledges when the ice is thickest or good shipments to the
settlements and towns being contingent on the ice situation in the
fjords. Even working in tourism it's evident as there are a lot of
peoblems with operators cancelling excursions on days with good
fishing, or cruise ships changing calls or berthing due to icebergs
in the harbors year round.
So I'm writing this, not surprised in
the least, on a flight from Kulusuk in East Greenland to Nuuk—except
we left Nuuk at 0600 this morning.
After waking up at 0430 to be at the
airport by 0515 to check into my flight (without even needing to show
an ID or receipt to get my boarding pass this time, just provide my
name), taking off at 0600 and arriving to the edge of the east coast
by 0730, the 20 of so of us on the flight realized the odds were not
in our favor. As we descended below the cloud cover and East
Greenland's signature snowcapped mountains came into view, so did a
solid layer of white fog just below the peaks. Although a stunning
visual to see mountains fighting through a flowing sea of white, it
did not bode well for landing.
As expected, the pilot announced a few
minutes later (although I'm not sure why he didn't simply turn around
and tell us as the door to the cockpit had been open the entire
flight) to tell us in Greenlandic and Danish (and a quick version in
English after the flight attendent made note there was an 'English
talker' onboard) that we were in (admittedly the world's most
beautiful) holding pattern.
((Yes, I just broke the world record
for using the most parenthesis in a single sentence))
The calm I was feeling promptly broke
when, a moment later, the pilot told us 'we are going to try and land
through it, and will pull up if we see something that shouldn't be
there' and put he wheels of our Dash-8 down. All the while, we
couldn't see more than five feet through the fog.
At this point I should mention that
just this week I sat in on an interview a German journalist was
conducting with an Air Greenland pilot—who did not seem to grasp
the idea of too much information and happily told us not only about
why there had been accidents in the past, but how he 'longed for a
challenge while flying' because the routes here apparently bore the
pilots. The comments seemed amusing at the time—but not while
attempting to land in no visibility while replaying his comments
about landing in no visibility in Greenland being vastly more
difficult than anywhere else in the world as the angles and mountains
leave a smaller margin of error than the instruments allow for.
Luckily (though not so much for my
nerves and stomach), the pilots decided last second to pull up hard,
giving me a great sideways view of a mountaintop. They then let us
know they weren't going to try again and that we needed to go to the
nearest airport in the country with an airstrip to land—which
happened to be back to Nuuk, on the other side of the country, as all
other towns and settlements on the east coast only have heliports.
Strangely (to me as an American), the
20 or so other passengers (17 native Greenlandic and a 3 person
Danish party) all smiled and laughed, before simply asking the flight
attendent for more coffee. She wasn't asked about alternate flights
or times or compensation—and she seemed genuinely surprised when I
asked her how often our flight ran weeky (twice). 'They'll arrange
something for you all; maybe tonight, or tomorrow possibly' she said
calmly before walking back to the front to take pictures out one of
the windows herself.
*
After landing two hours later, I was
informed by the agents at the desk that they would call me at 1900
that night and they had booked me a hotel, sending me on my way back
to my apartment in a taxi (with, I kid you not, a piece of paper from
the airline to give to the driver saying 'we owe you ___' for him to
fill in later and collect from them) after finding out I lived in
Nuuk. Hours later, I got a call from operations letting me know they
couldn't arrange another flight until Friday morning—two days after
my original flight.
That flight, however, made it in record
time.
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