Kangerlussuaq Airport Live Cam

History

The genesis of Kangerlussuaq Airport is inextricably linked to the strategic imperatives of World War II. In 1941, the United States Army Air Forces scoured Greenland’s west coast for a stable, low-ice runway to serve as a weather station and emergency landing site for North Atlantic ferry flights. The choice fell upon the expansive glacial outwash plain near the settlement of Sondrestrom, where engineers carved a 2,743-meter gravel strip—then the longest runway in the Arctic—amid permafrost and drifting tundra. Known initially as Bluie West-8, the airfield provided a critical “Arctic gateway” for lend-lease aircraft bound for Europe, and its meteorological reports underpinned Allied convoy routing through iceberg-strewn waters.