Greenland Gets a Little Easier to Visit as United Starts Nonstop Flights

Greenland, the sparsely populated island coveted by President 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 to Nuuk, the capital. The seasonal flights, operated by United Airlines, began on 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 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,” Mr. Ngai said as the tour boat made its way out on the icy sea. “Not a lot of people have been here.”

Mr. Trump thrust Greenland into the spotlight this year by declaring that he wanted to buy it, an idea that he also broached in his first term. That proposal is widely opposed in Greenland, a self-governing territory that has been connected to Denmark for more than 300 years.

But that doesn’t mean Greenland wants nothing to do with the United States. Officials are eager to welcome Americans and others looking to explore glaciers and mountains and engage in cultural exchange. To encourage visitors, the government recently extended a runway at the airport in Nuuk to accommodate larger planes used by many commercial airlines — United flew a Boeing 737 Max 8 on its first flight here, carrying 157 passengers.