United’s Inaugural Flight to Greenland

Flying United’s Inaugural Flight to Greenland | Newark to Nuuk Flight Review
Review: Hotel Hans Egede, Nuuk
Trip Photos: Greenland Summer 2025
Review: United Airlines 737 MAX 8 Economy Plus: Nuuk GOH to Newark EWR

YOUTUBE: United Airlines: Newark to Nuuk
YOUTUBE: United Airlines: Nuuk to Newark

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It’s inaugural season again at United, and they have been busy launching new innovative routes such as Ulaanbaatar, Dakar, and now Nuuk. The route is being operated by a Boeing 737 MAX 8 which has been transformational for the kinds of destinations United can fly to.

Now, why is United deciding to launch flights to Nuuk now versus before? 2024 saw some well needed upgrades to Nuuk Airport to be able to handle these planes. The summer of 2024 saw upgrades to Nuuk’s existing passenger terminal to accommodate up to 4x as many passengers. Then, in November of 2024, Nuuk Airport’s runway, which was only about 900 meters long, was lengthened to 2200+ meters. So now it could handle even certain widebody aircraft.

I took a quick visit to the United club near gate C123 where they had the classic United signage pointing to the new route that was launching today.

The other United Club in the C concourse also had the same signage.

Inaugural Flight Festivities

Back at our gate, there was a nice set up for our flight…well…almost.

Our gate was C105 however these gates have a relatively small area given that they are used for narrowbody aircraft. So our inaugural party setup was actually right across at gate C104. So we were essentially blocking an entire gate just for our inaugural set up. LOL.

As I reached the setup area, the staff had just opened the food spread for this inaugural party.

There were a few drinks and food items set up for us:

The stage was also set up for our speakers today. I loved the blue theme overall and the background picture of Nuuk.

Who knows, maybe I had a speech or 2 in me, too, ready to go.

That was, of course, before I was greeted mid-speech by United’s very own Jon Gooda and Patrick Quayle 😉.

Our real speakers were up. First up, we had Jon Gooda, who is United’s VP of the Newark Hub. He introduced the route, this inaugural event, and set us up for what was to come.

Then we had Patrick Quayle. He’s United’s SVP of Global Route Network and Alliances. He is responsible for the ideation of this route, and all other routes in the network. He talked about this route, the new Jetblue partnership, and even pointed us to Marty St George, the president of Jetblue, who was also on this route.

Following him, we had Jacob Isbosethsen.

Once all the speeches were done, it was time for the ceremonial ribbon cutting to honor the new route.

And then a few pictures of course with PQ and the crew working our flight.

Our crew had a few heavy hitters. The captain is Miles Morgan, who is a managing director of flight training at Denver for 737s, and so it’s definitely an honor to have him operating the gates. Our purser was Susan who Patrick Quayle has personally chosen to work multiple inaugural flights, including the Marrakesh inaugural. She even remembered me from that flight once she saw me!

And of course, if it’s a United inaugural, you will likely run into Warren who’s a regular attendee for these flights and dresses up appropriately to the destination we are traveling to. His effort each time makes these inaugural flights that much more fun to be a part of.

And of course, being a pilot myself, I had to get one with Captain Morgan (yes that’s right, like the rum) and Patrick.

After all that, it was finally time to get on board this flight to Nuuk! Inaugural flights like these always bring out United’s most frequent flyers. So while preboarding as a global service or 1K passenger is usually a distinguishing privilege…..not so much on this flight. There are plenty of global services and 1K passengers to go around.

United sells the forward cabin on this flight as United Premium Plus. But why? Why is it not the standard “United First” or “United Business” that this cabin usually takes on? The reason here is that the “United First” branding is strictly for domestic flights. The “United Business” branding is for those SFO/LAX-EWR, Latin America, and Canada flights. Flights from the US to Europe count as a “Polaris” route, and Greenland is in Europe, so technically this cabin could be Polaris. But marketing these recliner seats as “Polaris Business” would detract from what the real, flatbed Polaris product is. So “Premium Plus” makes the most sense.

The In-Flight Experience

 

Waiting at each of these seats was a bunch of stuff, we’ll get to see most of these same items in a bit. The extra things they got up here, however, include the polaris bear, an amenity kit, and the saks 5th ave blanket & pillow.

The economy cabin was your standard 3-3 economy class cabin, which included an extra legroom Economy Plus Section at the start of the flight.

Waiting for us at our seats were the economy set of inaugural goodies.

So what exactly did we get?

• We got some stickers commemorating the new route, which were pretty neat.
• We also got a welcome note from Patrick Quayle that was in English on the front, and Greenlandic & Danish on the back.
• Then we also got a poster.
• We also got an inaugural pajama shirt:
• On the front it had a nice art visual of Nuuk with inaugural flight details.
• The back side had a list of all the new routes United launched this summer, and boy, is this an impressive spread or what.

It was a rainy day in Newark today and even though I was behind the wing, wow it was an awesome view.

Eventually we pushed back, pretty on time honestly which is impressive for an inaugural flight.

After taxiing for a bit, we made our way to runway 4L for what was a near full power takeoff for a 737 MAX 8.

The nature of Nuuk is that its very exposed to the Atlantic so it routinely is susceptible to bad weather. As a result, in case the weather is too choppy to land, the aircraft has to be loaded with enough fuel to divert to Canada or even Iceland.

Now, Nuuk is the city name we are flying to, but some of you might be wondering why the passenger airport code is GOH? Why not NUK or NUU or something similar? This city was founded by a Danish missionary named Hans Egede in 1728 and it was founded with he name “Godthab” back then, which meant “Good Hope”. Nobody has a globe anymore these days but if you look at your globes, a lot of them will still say “Godthab” on area where “Nuuk” is. This is where the GOH code comes from.

Once we were out of that storm, it was a beautiful day for flying up north.

United has done a good job with having menu’s accessible via their app, but it was completely wrong for the purpose of this flight. Because it was the inaugural, they had a special Greenlandic themed menu, but they probably didn’t get to load it into the app. But the drink options are still pretty accurate.

Eventually, meal service began. And we had the choice of a pasta, halibut, or a chicken in blueberry thyme sauce. I would’ve taken the halibut but it was gone by the time we got to my row, so the chicken it was.

It was a reasonably good-looking plate of food. It was definitely better than what United normally serves on their routes out of the US.

The salad was a baby red oak lead and arugula salad and it was covered already in a lemon vinaigrette dressing. It was pretty good.

This was the dessert and it was a “Kalaallit Kaagiat” which is a traditional Greenlandic cake with raising and cardamom. I’m sure it’s usually pretty good, but this cake was quite try. It could very well be because we are eating this at 37,000 feet, but the effort is well appreciated.

The main course was a Grilled chicken with a savory balsamic blueberry thyme sauce. It also came with scalloped potatoes with caramelized pearl onions and root vegetables which were oven roasted with cumin and aromatics.

The chicken was definitely sitting in quite a bit of oil, but the chicken was still good. The scalloped potatoes were also drenched in oil, and so while I spent time wiping the oil on the side of the plate on each bite, it was still a flavorful dish.

We also got a beverage service with our meal, and I went for glass of white wine.

On this route, I would highly recommend sitting on the left side of the aircraft. Departing from Newark, you essentially fly quite north. This opens up a world of awesome view as you’ll see in a short bit.

The views were incredible as we began to leave northern Canada and head into the Labrador Sea.

At this point I was in the forward cabin chatting with the crew and their excitement about the new route. I even took a peek at one of the premium plus cabin meals.

At this point it was a complete party up front. I was chilling with a few social media people like @laxtoluxury, @qfsaviation, etc.

And of course, Patrick Quayle and I were rocking matching Greenland ties.

Another fun fact is that Jetblue president Marty St. George was also on the flight. United and Jetblue recently inked their new Blue Skies Partnership, and Patrick said that if they signed this deal, Marty had to join on the inaugural flight to Greenland, and so here he was!

I nicknamed this flight “the kickback at 37,000 feet”. Everyone was up and about chatting it up AND the crew also ran out of alcohol because it was all consumed. Talk about a party.

And then of course, our lovely crew working the forward cabin.

While I was up front, the crew did an entire second round of service in the main cabin which included a KIND bar + another round of drinks.

But after this, our descent began as we made our way down into Greenland.

Once we broke through the clouds we could see those rocky hills with partial snow cover.

And then as we got closer, we also got view of the city of Nuuk off our left side:

And then we touched down onto runway 4 in Nuuk.

We used up all of Nuuk’s brand new,  6 month old, newly extended 2200+ meter runway to hit the end and then do a U-turn and make our way back to the terminal.

Once we taxiied in, there was a water canon salute to greet us, and a huge crowd looking down upon our flight from the road. This was truly a big time event for this city and country that so many people came to witness this.

I got one last one with Captain Miles Morgan and Captain Jeff on the ground with Patrick, and then made my way down the plane.

On the Ground at Nuuk Airport

And then I took in the view of our aircraft from various points on the ground:

This was the entire terminal building for Nuuk Airport. There are no jetways but rather just parking spots. It very much gave me small town airport vibes…which makes sense given that Nuuk’s population is only about 20,000.

On arrival we got these welcome cards.

 

And then this is what the arrivals/front side of the airport looks like:

I made Greenland National News & Newspapers

It seems that my Greenland tie made quite an impression as I made the national news (12:06):

I even made the front page of the news paper:

2025-06-18_Nuuk_Ugeavis_-_18-06-2025

United Airlines After Party in Nuuk

All that was pretty cool but we had one last event remaining for this inaugural flight and that was the after party in Nuuk itself for media, airport officials, United staff, local government & tourism officials, and even the Air Greenland CEO was invited.

Nivi Tapas Bar has all kinds of local dishes and they were absolutely delicious

The restaurant had some pretty neat views and United signage signaling the event:

And of course I had a few excellent chats with one of Greenland’s head of Airport Authority and had some fun and serious chats about Greenlands Airports, their plans, and how they could appeal to more Americans’. But I certainly won’t be recapping any of that here.

 

All to say, this was a very fun and great event and I was glad to be here.

Final Thoughts

United has come across something very unique and special with this new route to Greenland. They have once again, innovated and beat the rest of the North American carriers to the punch. Is Nuuk a viable destination for United to fly to? We’ll find out but these tickets are not cheap. Economy is ~$800 for a 3.5-4 hour flight and Premium Plus is upwards of $1300. Those are steep prices to pay for a flight of this length. Americans have to be willing to pay that, and in turn fill the minimum number of seats needed to turn a profit. This route is only offered twice a week, the route is boutique, there’s fuel contingencies in place requiring extra fuel. Some of those play a role in the higher prices on this route.

The traffic on this route is going to be very American-centric. On the other end, these prices are likely ones that Greenlanders wanting to visit the US wouldn’t pay for. In recent times there’s also a lot of complex political factors in play that might hinder Greenlanders wanting to visit the US.

If United can get through these headwinds, then I think this is an unbelievable find for United and add to their route network. I really hope to fly this route again in the future and explore more of Greenland.