Trip Report: Flying On The Elusive Airbus A330-800neo With Air Greenland

There are some aircraft that have hundreds of them built every year like the Airbus A321, with thousands in existence and thousands more on order. Then, there are older aircraft that are nearing the end of life that had many operators in the past when they were originally produced like the classic Boeing 737-200, and now has less than 30 frames actively flying.

But new aircraft produced in smaller numbers are hard to come by, even the Boeing 737’s least popular type, the -600 variant had just under 70 produced during its time. But the Airbus A330-800neo has less than 10 currently flying, and the order book of the type won’t even hit 15, unlike the much more popular Airbus A330-900neo which currently has around 100 of the type flying and hundreds more on order.

Current operators of the elusive A330-800neo include Kuwait Airways with four, Uganda Airlines with two, and Air Greenland with a single aircraft. The only A330-800neo in the order book are four that will be headed to Garuda Indonesia and one that will be flying privately, which will become the only VIP A330-800neo and will not fly for an airline.

Air Greenland A330 Background

Air Greenland holds possession of the only Airbus A330-800neo that belongs to a company in the Western Hemisphere and will be the truth for the foreseeable future unless there are more orders or the single privately owned aircraft goes to someone in North or South America.

The A330-800 with the Greenlandic carrier is named “Tuukkaq” and means “Harpoon Head” in the native Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) language, and is a continuation of the airline’s previous flagship aircraft, an Airbus A330-200 that was named “Norsaq”, which translates to “Throwing Stick”.

Even the tail number pays homage to the country it calls home. Carrying a registration of OY-GKN, the ‘GKN’ stands for “Greenland Kalaallit Nunaat”, the second two words are how you say ‘Greenland’ in the native language.

The nose of my aircraft Tuukkaq (Photo: AirlineGeeks | Joey Gerardi)

The aircraft was delivered to the airline directly from Airbus in December of 2022, with their previous flagship A330-200 sticking around with the airline until March of 2023. The A330-200 did a final flyby over the country’s capital of Nuuk before making its way to the desert in the western United States.

At the time of writing this article, the aircraft flies almost five times a week from Copenhagen to Kangerlussuaq, which serves as the airline’s main international hub in Greenland. Kangerlussuaq itself only has a population of just above 500, and only serves as an international hub due to the fact it is one of the few commercial runways in the entire country that can handle the Air Greenland’s flagship.

A Panorama of the runway in Kangerlussuaq (Photo: AirlineGeeks | Joey Gerardi)

But, with new longer runways opening in the country’s capital of Nuuk, and the country’s biggest tourist destination city of Ilulissat, the route from Denmark to Greenland will shift away from Kangerlussuaq and go to the cities with the new runways once they open. This means that in the near future, the hub in Kangerlussuaq will close and shift to one of the country’s more populated cities, as Kangerlussuaq isn’t a final destination for the majority of the people visiting Greenland and is predominantly used as a connecting point to the rest of the country.

Even though the aircraft belongs to Air Greenland, the aircraft overnights and is parked in Copenhagen, Denmark during most of its a downtime. The aircraft starts there in the morning and flies to Greenland in the late morning/early afternoon, then operates the flight back to Denmark arriving in the evenings.

Day of the Flight

My flight to Copenhagen didn’t leave Kangerlussuaq until 12:40 p.m., but given that it’s a rare opportunity to get photographs of the A330-800neo landing in this location and I most likely will never have that chance again, I opted to take an early 7 am flight up to Kangerlussuaq from the country’s capital Nuuk. It left me with plenty of time to explore the airport and find the best place to get photos of the Air Greenland flagship landing.

The terminal in Kangerlussuaq (Photo: AirlineGeeks | Joey Gerardi)

This airport truly revolves around this flight to Copenhagen, from the morning until the flight time, the airline’s eight Dash-8s would come in from the country’s surrounding cities, bringing in people for the outbound on the big plane. Then once the big plane lands, flights would start leaving on the Dash-8s bringing the inbound passengers all over the country. In addition, the shops and stores in and around the terminal also open and close around the Copenhagen flight’s arrival and departure as that is when most tourists will be here.

Inside of the terminal, before it got busy (Photo: AirlineGeeks | Joey Gerardi)

As mentioned above, the population of Kangerlussuaq is only around 500 so it’s not very large. Given that Air Greenland’s A330-800neo seats 305 passengers, with the inbound and outbound passengers combined in the terminal, it means the number of passengers in the terminal is more than the town’s entire population the flights are full, which they usually are as this is one of the few ways into and out of Greenland.

The Security checkpoint only opens 2hours before international flights (Photo: AirlineGeeks | Joey Gerardi)

They did have a security checkpoint, but it was closed as all domestic flights within Greenland aren’t required to go through security. The checkpoint only opens two hours before the departure of the flights out of Greenland.

Even though I had four hours before the aircraft arrived, the time flew by and I made my way down towards the end of the runway for photographs. Despite it being the end of May during this trip, Kangerlussuaq is located above the Arctic Circle, so snow ended up being in the forecast, but that wasn’t bad as it made the red Airbus aircraft pop against the terrain and white hills behind it and the photos came out amazing.

Once the aircraft landed, I quickly made my way back to the terminal as security had opened by this point. The terminal was a lot fuller than it was before, now with inbound and outbound passengers alike in the terminal. Before heading through security, I made sure to get a picture in front of the signpost, which is the most photographed spot in the entire country of Greenland.

The most photographed spot in Greenland (Photo: AirlineGeeks | Joey Gerardi)

After security, there was a duty-free shop but not much else, other than the gate and a seating area. There was also an upstairs balcony that gave me a great overview of the operations on the ramp, with Air Greenland personnel sorting the bags from the domestic flights to points around Greenland, and vice versa for the bags going to Denmark.

The international gate area in Kangerlussuaq (Photo: AilrineGeeks | Joey Gerardi)

It wasn’t long before the main event was to begin, they called boarding for the flight and everyone made their way down the stairs to the ramp for boarding which is always fun, especially on a widebody jet. From the ground, you could truly see the size of this aircraft, and somehow the red livery looked even better from up close. They had dual boarding, with rows 1-32 using the forward stairs and 33-47 using the rear stairs. I was seated in row 36, so I used the rear steps, passing by the massive red engines on the way there.

Passing by the massive Airbus A330-800neo engine (Photo: AirlineGeeks | Joey Gerardi)

A majority of the main cabin is arranged in a 2-4-2 configuration, towards the back of the cabin where the plane narrows in rows 43-47 it changes to 2-3-2. Getting on board I also noticed the wonderful design on the bulkheads.

The bulkhead design on the Air Greenland A330 (Photo: AirlineGeeks | Joey Gerardi)

The safety briefing, along with all announcements, was done in Greenlandic (Kalaallisut), then Danish, and finally English. It was pretty interesting seeing the terminal from the aircraft window, especially given the smaller size of the terminal and the widebody aircraft I was sitting in.

The terminal in Kangerlussuaq from my seat (Photo: AirlineGeeks | Joey Gerardi)

As it was snowing in Kangerlussuaq, we did get de-iced before taking off which didn’t take very long. After takeoff, we disappeared into the clouds almost immediately as it was overcast skies, which is a bit unfortunate, but at least the weather stayed relatively clear for the aircraft’s arrival photos.

Departing out of Kangerlussuaq (Photo: AirlineGeeks | Joey Gerardi)

We climbed up to our cruising altitude of 39,000 feet/11,887.20 meters quite quickly. Despite the plane being pretty much full, this four-hour flight isn’t even close to the range this aircraft can fly, so there wasn’t much fuel required over to Copenhagen. Once we got away from the shoreline, the clouds cleared up and I could see the Greenland Ice Sheet below, although it was pretty hard to distinguish what was ice and what was clouds.

Flying over the Greenland Ice Sheet (Photo: AirlineGeeks | Joey Gerardi)

They did have a snack service which consisted of bread snacks and a drink from their extensive list of soft drinks. I chose Faxe Kondi, which is a Danish soft drink.

The initial service over to Copenhagen (Photo: AirlineGeeks } Joey Gerardi)

I began to watch a movie from their list, which included many popular blockbuster movies in English, Danish, and Greenlandic (Kalaallisut). There was a headphone jack as well as a USB port on the seatback screen so electronics could be easily charged.

An hour into the flight we flew over the eastern shores of Greenland and a meal was brought around. The meal was chicken and potatoes, a salad, and bread, with dessert being a brownie. This was nicely presented in a box, which had the same designs on it as the aircraft bulkhead.

The meal on the Kangerlussuaq to Copenhagen flight (Photo: AirlineGeeks | Joey Gerardi)

The next country we flew over was Iceland, which also brought us under the Arctic Circle as Iceland is located just south of the line.

It’s weird to think that just a few days prior I flew from Iceland to Greenland on a Dash-8, which was also on Air Greenland, although that journey did take longer than the length of the flight up to this point.

Flying over Iceland (Photo: AirlineGeeks | Joey Gerardi)

They did turn the fasten seat belt sign on at this point as there was a bit of turbulence going over Iceland, but I didn’t mind as I was still slowly going through my food. It was cool looking at the bright red winglet on the aircraft against the blue sky and the contrast was quite nice.

The winglet of my aircraft (Photo: AirlineGeeks | Joey Gerardi)

I did settle in and began to watch movies and TV for most of the flight, as we were flying over the ocean for the remainder of the flight there wasn’t much to see outside. However, being the true AvGeek that I am, I did occasionally take a picture of empty skies as it is still cool being onboard this aircraft.

A unique feature of this aircraft is the individual cupholders at each seat, which drop down from the seat in front of you, that way it is not necessary to lower the entire tray table for just a single cup.

Another unique feature about this aircraft was in the rear restroom in the main cabin, or I guess technically the two of them. The back two restrooms next to each other have a removable wall between them, and when opened up it becomes a handicap-accessible restroom, which is a neat feature I have never seen on an aircraft before that point and I hope continues to be on newer aircraft as it really helps those that do need that extra space as airplane bathrooms aren’t particularly known for their roominess.

There were a couple more snack services throughout the flight, but I did miss them as I had nodded off at some point without even realizing it, but I did luckily wake up before we hit landfall.

The first sighting of land after Iceland was Norway, and I could see Stavanger Airport below us.

Passing over Norway and Stavanger Sola Airport (Photo: AirlineGeks | Joey Gerardi)

The IFE screen was very clean and neatly laid out, super easy to use and you could also put it in English, Danish, or Greenlandic. It also had a time zone feature where you could look at different clocks from around Europe, Greenland, and one from North America which was New York.

Looking at the route on the IFE screen (Photo: AirlineGeeks | Joey Gerardi)

It wasn’t long after entering Denmark airspace when we began descending towards Copenhagen. As this flight was roughly 4-hours long and we were flying east, the sun also began to set as we grew closer to the destination. The sky began to turn a wonderful shade of pink, which went nicely with the red winglet of the aircraft.

While the A350 is famous for its tail and other exterior cameras being one of the first commercial aircraft to have this, these cameras area also fitted on the Airbus A330-800neo. You can’t see much out of them while in mid-air, but as we got closer to the ground, the cameras proved to be very useful.

The flight attendants cleaned up the cabin and had a seat as we went into Copenhagen.

Just before landing in Copenhagen, Denmark (Photo: AirlineGeeks | Joey Gerardi)

I did look at the front view camera on the IFE screen as we were on final approach to the airport, which was really pretty given the color of the skies that evening and that I could see the runway lights as well.

Looking out of the front-view camera on the IFE, with Copenhagen Airport in view (Photo: AirlineGeeks | Joey Gerardi)

We landed at Copenhagen Airport at 9:13 p.m. local time after just over 4 hours of flying time and we taxied to the gate. Even though Greenland is geographically located in North America, it is considered an “autonomous territory of Denmark”, so this was treated as a domestic flight. This also makes the 2,138-mile flight between Kangerlussuaq and Copenhagen the longest domestic flight in Denmark, as Denmark itself is not a large country.

On the ground in Copenhagen (Photo: AirlineGeeks | Joey Gerardi)

Conclusion

There are so many cool aspects and AvGeek features of this flight; It is one of the only seven Airbus A330-800neos that exist worldwide, and the only one belonging to a company in the western hemisphere, the route out of such a small community like Kangerlussuaq is also pretty neat and the fact this route is on borrowed time as the newer runways will soon be opening in Nuuk and Ililissat, shifting this route to one or both of those cities and finally the fact you are flying on Air Greenland is perhaps the coolest aspect as it is a unique airline to fly on, that not many people can claim.

Time is running short for those AvGeeks who wish to fly the jet to the small community of Kangerlussuaq and check it off your AvGeek bucket list. But for now, the route operates five times a week year-round, and even when it does eventually shift to another city, you will still be on the airline’s mighty flagship A330-800neo, one of only seven worldwide and you’ll be in Greenland too.

Air Greenland operates in one of the most secluded locations on the planet, and it is so unique to be able to fly on a long-haul jet for 4-hours from a large city and end up on the world’s largest island.

A video account of this flight can be found below in 4K quality:

 Editor’s Note: Air Greenland provided AirlineGeeks with the seat on this flight, but this trip report is an accurate portrayal of the events and is in no way swayed by that aspect.

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Joey Gerardi

Joey has always been interested in planes, for as long as he can remember. He grew up in Central New York during the early 2000s when US Airways Express turboprops ruled the skies. Being from a non-aviation family made it harder for him to be around planes and would only spend about three hours a month at the airport. He was so excited when he could drive by himself and the first thing he did with the license was get ice cream and go plane spotting for the entire day. When he has the time (and money) he likes to take spotting trips to any location worth a visit but has a special interest in Essential Air Service Airports. He got his degree in Aviation Management and Operations from WMU in June of 2022, and is currently working full time for an airline in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

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