Greenland: Siltanews – News Desk
NUUK, Greenland — Greenland, the sparsely populated island coveted by President Donald Trump, is less than 1,500 miles from the northern tip of Maine. Yet getting here has never been easy, and few Americans have made the trip.
But that is changing .For the next three months, Americans in search of Arctic adventure can hop on a direct flight to Greenland — roughly a four-hour nonstop trip from Newark, New Jersey, to Nuuk, the capital. The seasonal flights, operated by United Airlines, began June 14 and are the first to the island from the United States in nearly two decades.
The first flight’s passengers included Eugene Ngai, his wife, Kendra Johnson, and their 16-month-old daughter, Nora. They had always wanted to visit but were deterred by the long trip, which had required flying mainly through Copenhagen, Denmark, or Reykjavik, Iceland. But the United flight was a game-changer, and it didn’t take long to pay off: On a boat tour less than a day after landing, Nora saw her first whale — then her second, third and fourth.
“Before we got on the flight, we were thinking, we can’t believe we’re going to Greenland because it’s kind of this elusive destination to get to,” Ngai said as the tour boat made its way out on the icy sea. “Not a lot of people have been here.”