Page 33 - Twin and Turbine September 2017

PETER HERR PHOTO
Final approach into Narsarsuaq, Greenland on a VFR day. The one-way-in and one-way-out airport is situated in a fjord.
Our terminals, in every instance, were better than forecast. The critical one was Narsarsuaq, which lies at the head of a notorious one-way fjord. It had been below minimums when we took off; forecast to improve. It is 678 nm out of Goose. And if that fjord is plugged up, your alternate is Sondrestrom, 365 nm northward. As we flew northeastward, an alternate — and a possible landing on the ice cap — was very much on our minds. Narsarsuaq is far up a fjord from the sea. If weather there is down, meaning less than 4,000 and 5, it’s necessary to fly up the fjord, easy enough to find because of an NDB at the entrance, which we’d picked up leaving Goose. But finding the entrance was only half the problem. Then you had to snake your way up the winding fjord between tall mountains with no room for a 180. At a critical Y, fortunately identified by a wrecked ship, you had to take a left turn up a canyon (a right turn is to a dead end, — dead, dead, dead). You then hoped to break out over a
small bay with the runway end a hard-right turn immediately ahead. All the time you battle fierce, turbulent winds trying to blow you into a canyon wall. And the airport itself is buffeted by those same wild and rolling winds found so often on the lee side of mountains everywhere.
We needn’t have given it a thought. As we came up on the coast we saw that indeed the fjord was a bit plugged. He could have gone in underneath, but instead he flew on over the coastal mountains, and shortly there was this great hole in the clouds, with one end of a runway barely showing. The west wind aloft
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September 2017
TWIN & TURBINE • 31