Air Greenland suspends ticket sales over COVID outbreak
Air Greenland (GL, Nuuk) has suspended online ticket sales for all flights until January 16 because of a significant reduction in staff due to Covid-related infections or self-isolation, the carrier has said in a statement sent to local media. For the time being, it will operate its fleet of Dash-8 aircraft only half-filled.
Bookings have been removed for the carrier’s domestic flights as well as for trips between the autonomous Danish territory and both Copenhagen Kastrup (from Kangerlussuaq) and Reykjavik Keflavik (from Nuuk), the airline told the Greenlandic newspaper Sermitsiaq on January 6.
The Danish civil aviation authority (Trafikstyrelsen) has given Air Greenland emergency permission to fly its fleet of seven Dash-8 turboprops without cabin crew as long as there are no more than 19 passengers on board each of the 37-seater aircraft. According to the ch-aviation fleets advanced module, the airline currently operates six DHC-8-Q200s and one DHC-8-200, plus a single A330-200, OY-GRN (msn 230), which remains active between Kangerlussuaq and Copenhagen according to Flightradar24 ADS-B data. Air Greenland operates a total of 70 scheduled routes, the ch-aviation capacities module shows, all but two of them domestic.
It will be the pilots’ responsibility to ensure the continuation of safety briefings and other communication with passengers. Passengers who are moved due to the restriction on the number of passengers on board “will automatically be rebooked for the earliest possible alternative departure,” the carrier stressed.
Air Greenland said that Denmark’s permit had been issued in order to secure the territory’s infrastructure. Although online bookings have been suspended, a number of seats have been reserved for travellers with “an urgent need to travel” such as, among other things, critical illness or a death in the immediate family.
Medical transport and search and rescue services are unaffected by the restrictions, as are all helicopter routes and also fixed-wing flights to Qaanaaq, an airport which is a lifeline for northern Greenland and lies close to Thule Air Base, the United States Space Force’s northernmost base.
Due to the growing rate of infections in Greenland and in Denmark, the airline’s customer service manager, Johanne Knudsen, warned in the statement that further “last-minute changes” may have to be made to the schedules in the coming weeks.
Although Covid-19 cases in Greenland, which has a population of 56,500, were close to zero for much of the autumn, new daily cases rose to 497 on January 9 and total cases stood at 2,747 for the two weeks from December 27 to January 9.