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Air Greenland adds more flights to Iqaluit-Nuuk route

A spokesperson for Air Greenland said departures will increase to 33 departures this year from 24 last year.

Interest from non-business travellers surprises airline

Passengers exit an Air Greenland Dash 8 after arrival at the Iqaluit airport last summer. (Daniel MacIsaac/CBC)

Air Greenland is increasing the number of flights between Nuuk and Iqaluit this year.

The airline began flying between Nunavut and Greenland last summer using Dash-8 airplanes. There had not been direct scheduled flights between the two cities since First Air eliminated its Iqaluit-Nuuk route in 2001.

A spokesperson for Air Greenland said departures will increase to 33 this year from 24 last year. The service will run for 17 weeks starting on June 10, with bi-weekly flights on Mondays and Fridays.

Christian Berg, the airline's head of sales, said the company was surprised by the number of leisure travellers flying the route last year.

"We saw that there was actually more volume in the segment we call friends and relatives than we expected to see," he said. "We saw this as a service primarily as a service for business travel between the two regions."