Major Airports in Greenland

Greenland is the largest island on earth, yet almost all of it is locked under an ice sheet, and its roughly 56,000 people live in towns and settlements scattered along the coast with no roads connecting them. That single fact shapes everything about how the country flies: for most of Greenland, the local airport or heliport is the only year-round way in or out, so aviation here is a necessity rather than a luxury.

Eight airports appear in the route data, running down the west coast from the Disko Bay towns to the southern fjords, with one lonely outpost on the remote east coast and a United States space base in the far north-west. The map and table below rank them by the number of destinations they serve with regular flights, using live AirportRoutes route data. And there is no better time to map them, because Greenland’s aviation network is changing faster right now than almost anywhere on the planet, with brand-new runways at Nuuk, Qaqortoq and, soon, Ilulissat.

The map shows the seven airports with scheduled commercial passenger flights. The eighth, Pituffik Space Base in the far north-west, is a US military field with no public service and sits off the top of the frame.

Can you fly direct from Greenland to the United States?

Yes, but only just, and only from one airport. In June 2025, United Airlines began a seasonal, twice-weekly Newark to Nuuk service on a Boeing 737 MAX 8, the first scheduled flight in history between Greenland and the United States. The route ran through the summer and is returning in 2026. It only became possible because of Nuuk’s new 2,200-metre runway, which opened in November 2024: the old 950-metre strip was far too short for a jet that size.

For everywhere else, and outside that short summer window, the path to the US runs through Europe or Iceland. Air Greenland and SAS link Nuuk and Kangerlussuaq to Copenhagen, and Icelandair connects Nuuk and Kulusuk to Keflavik in Iceland, from where the entire North American network is one connection away. The only other long-standing American presence in Greenland is the military base at Pituffik, the former Thule, which is not open to the public.

RANKED BY DESTINATIONS

Greenland's airports with scheduled service

By regularly-served nonstop destinations (live AirportRoutes data). Nuuk is the new international hub; the rest are mostly domestic airports flown by Air Greenland, plus the US military base at Pituffik.

Airport	IATA	Serves	City / region
1. Nuuk (Nuuk International)	GOH	13	Nuuk (capital)
2. Ilulissat	JAV	10	Ilulissat / Disko Bay
3. Aasiaat	JEG	5	Aasiaat / Disko Bay
4. Kangerlussuaq (Kangerlussuaq Intl)	SFJ	4	Kangerlussuaq
5. Narsarsuaq	UAK	4	South Greenland
6. Kulusuk	KUS	3	Kulusuk / Tasiilaq (east coast)
7. Sisimiut	JHS	3	Sisimiut
8. Pituffik Space Base	THU	0*	North-west (US military)

A closer look at Greenland’s airports

✈️ Nuuk International Airport (GOH)

Open in Google Maps

Nuuk International sits on the edge of Greenland’s capital, a town of around 19,000 people that is comfortably the country’s largest. In November 2024 it opened a new 2,200-metre runway, replacing the cramped 950-metre strip that had limited it to small turboprops, and the change has reshaped the whole country’s air map.

Nuuk is now Greenland’s principal international gateway, carrying around 13 regularly-served nonstop destinations. It combines a dense domestic network with the long-haul links that used to run through Kangerlussuaq: Air Greenland flies its Airbus A330neo to Copenhagen, Icelandair connects to Keflavik, and in summer United flies in from Newark, the country’s only nonstop link to the United States.

Main airlines: Air Greenland, Icelandair, United Airlines, SAS and Sun-Air of Scandinavia. See GOH’s full route map on AirportRoutes →

✈️ Ilulissat Airport (JAV)

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Ilulissat is the jewel of Greenlandic tourism, the town beside the UNESCO-listed Ilulissat Icefjord where the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier calves icebergs into Disko Bay. Its airport is the busiest in the country after Nuuk for sheer route count, with around 10 regularly-served destinations, almost all of them domestic links knitting together the Disko Bay and west-coast towns.

Change is coming here too: a brand-new international airport is being built beside the existing strip and is due to open in late 2026, with Air Greenland set to launch a direct Ilulissat to Copenhagen route, putting the icefjord within a single flight of mainland Europe for the first time.

Main airlines: Air Greenland (with Air Iceland historically serving Iceland links). See JAV’s full route map on AirportRoutes →

✈️ Aasiaat Airport (JEG)

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Aasiaat sits at the southern edge of Disko Bay and is one of Greenland’s larger fishing towns. Its airport serves around 5 regularly-served destinations, every one of them domestic, working as a feeder that links the smaller Disko Bay communities such as Qeqertarsuaq, Qasigiannguit and Kangaatsiaq into the wider network at Ilulissat and Nuuk.

Like most Greenlandic regional fields it is a short runway flown by Air Greenland’s Dash-8 turboprops, with onward travel to the tiniest settlements handled by helicopter.

Main airlines: Air Greenland. See JEG’s full route map on AirportRoutes →

✈️ Kangerlussuaq International Airport (SFJ)

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Kangerlussuaq is the airport that built modern Greenlandic aviation. Created by the United States in the Second World War as Sondrestrom Air Base and handed to Greenland in 1992, it sits inland at the head of a long fjord with no real town attached, and it has the longest runway in the country at 2,810 metres. For decades that runway made it the only field able to take Air Greenland’s Copenhagen jet and Icelandair’s flights, so nearly every visitor passed through it.

That era is ending. With Nuuk’s new runway open, the Kalaallit Airports programme is deliberately shifting international traffic away from Kangerlussuaq, and its hub role is winding down. It still records around 4 regularly-served destinations and keeps a niche as the gateway to the inland ice: the road to the edge of the ice sheet at the Russell Glacier, stable clear-sky weather for aurora viewing, and science logistics all run through it.

Main airlines: Air Greenland. See SFJ’s full route map on AirportRoutes →

✈️ Narsarsuaq Airport (UAK)

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Narsarsuaq is the gateway to green South Greenland, the mild, sheep-farming corner of fjords and meadows that holds the Norse ruins of Erik the Red’s Brattahlid at Qassiarsuk and the medieval church at Hvalsey. Another former American wartime base (Bluie West One), it carries around 4 regularly-served destinations, all domestic links up the coast plus historic seasonal connections to Copenhagen and Iceland.

Its role, though, is shrinking fast. A new airport at Qaqortoq opened in April 2026 with a longer runway and a far more convenient location for the region’s main town, and it is taking over as South Greenland’s principal gateway, leaving Narsarsuaq’s long-term future uncertain.

Main airlines: Air Greenland. See UAK’s full route map on AirportRoutes →

✈️ Kulusuk Airport (KUS)

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Kulusuk is a gravel airstrip on a small island off the wild east coast, near Tasiilaq, the largest town in the Ammassalik district and the hub of the most isolated, least-connected region of Greenland. It handles around 3 regularly-served destinations: a long domestic hop across the ice cap to Nuuk, a helicopter shuttle to Tasiilaq, and, crucially, a short hop to Iceland.

That Iceland link is what makes Kulusuk special. Icelandair flies in from Keflavik, making this remote outpost a popular day-trip and short-break destination for travellers who want to set foot in Arctic Greenland straight from Reykjavik.

Main airlines: Air Greenland and Icelandair. See KUS’s full route map on AirportRoutes →

✈️ Sisimiut Airport (JHS)

Open in Google Maps

Sisimiut is Greenland’s second-largest town, a busy fishing and industrial centre just north of the Arctic Circle on the west coast. Its airport serves around 3 regularly-served destinations, all of them domestic, tying it into the Nuuk and Kangerlussuaq network.

For visitors it is best known as the northern end of the Arctic Circle Trail, the celebrated long-distance hiking route that runs roughly 165 kilometres across the tundra to Kangerlussuaq, making the short flight in or out a natural bookend to the trek.

Main airlines: Air Greenland. See JHS’s full route map on AirportRoutes →

✈️ Pituffik Space Base (THU)

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Pituffik, far up in the north-west at almost 77 degrees north, is not a place you can book a flight to. It is the United States’ northernmost military installation, known for decades as Thule Air Base and renamed Pituffik Space Base in 2023 when it passed to the US Space Force. It runs ballistic-missile early-warning radar and space-surveillance missions, and it sits at the centre of the renewed strategic attention Greenland has drawn from Washington.

There is no scheduled commercial passenger service: access is by US military and contractor charter only, and the handful of links that show in route data are connections to the tiny Inughuit settlements of Qaanaaq and Savissivik nearby. We include it for completeness, but for ordinary travellers it is closed.

Main airlines: None scheduled (US military and contractor charters only). See THU’s full route map on AirportRoutes →

Greenland’s airport revolution: Nuuk, Qaqortoq and Ilulissat

The single biggest story in Greenlandic travel is the wave of new runways transforming how the country connects to the world. For generations the system was awkward by design: international flights had to land at Kangerlussuaq, an inland former US airbase with no town, because it had the only runway long enough for a jet, and passengers then changed onto a small plane to reach the capital. The state operator Kalaallit Airports set out to fix that by building proper runways at the towns where people actually live.

Nuuk came first, opening its 2,200-metre runway in November 2024 and immediately drawing the Copenhagen jet, Icelandair and the new United service from Newark. Qaqortoq in the south followed in April 2026, replacing Narsarsuaq as the gateway to the green southern fjords. A new international airport at Ilulissat, beside the famous icefjord, is due to open in late 2026 with its own direct Copenhagen link. Together they are redrawing the map faster than the route data can keep up, shifting Greenland from a single inherited Cold War gateway to a network of modern airports at its real population centres.

Getting to Greenland, and getting around it

From outside, Greenland has two long-standing front doors plus a brand-new one. Copenhagen is the historic gateway, with Air Greenland and SAS flying to Nuuk and Kangerlussuaq, and Iceland is the short-hop alternative, with Icelandair serving Nuuk and Kulusuk from Keflavik. Since June 2025 there is also the seasonal United link from Newark into Nuuk. There is no road or rail connection to anywhere, and no car ferry from the outside world, so essentially everyone arrives by air.

Inside Greenland it is the same story at a smaller scale. Towns are not joined by road, so getting between them means an Air Greenland Dash-8 between the airports above, a helicopter for the places without a runway, or a coastal ferry in the ice-free months. Smaller settlements such as Upernavik, Qaarsut, Maniitsoq, Paamiut and Nanortalik sit on this web of short airstrips and heliports, and the smallest communities are reached only by helicopter from the nearest airport. It is one of the few places left where a national airline’s core job is simply keeping the country physically connected.