Good morning from Puvirnituq, Nunavik, Quebec! My name is Alex, and welcome to this trip report.
Today, I’m here in Quebec’s far north to fly
with Air Inuit on board their Dash 8-300 back down south to Montreal.
First things first though, this flight has an… interesting backstory to it. If
you haven’t watched the previous Air Inuit video on the 737-200, there’s a link in the
top right corner of your screen, and it’ll… at least partially explain why I’m here.
The Nunavik region, or the part of Quebec that’s north of the 55th parallel,
is predominantly Inuit, and it’s home to 14 different communities that depend on air travel.
Long story short, the original plan for this trip
was for my good friend Mark Brandon and I to fly on Air Inuit’s 737-200,
and also to stay a few nights in the largest town in the region called Kuujjuaq.
That required, first of all, that flight on the 737 to Puvirnituq, and
then another one on a King Air across to Kuujjuaq.
Now, the first flight went off without a hitch, and it was an amazing experience, but pretty soon
after landing in Puvirnituq, it became clear that things were not going to go to plan.
At the time, the winds in Puvirnituq were around the 35 knot mark,
gusting up to 45 knots or even higher. Obviously the 737-200 is a flying tank and still made it
in and out, but that meant that every other flight was cancelled, including Kuujjuaq.
Puvirnituq has a population of just 1600 people, and after a local very generously gave us a ride,
we found our way to the one hotel here, and thank goodness they had a room!
For $220 a night, and given just where we were, it was exactly what we needed to regroup and
hopefully continue on the next day. After a quick walk to the local grocery store to
grab some food for the rest of the day and the next morning, and also to gawk at the prices,
we bundled up and went off to take more photos. By pure chance, we ended up meeting
some folks from Air Inuit, who once again, very generously gave us a ride to show us around.
We saw so much more than we ever would’ve on foot, so a huge thank you to you guys!
Seeing as we thought this would be our only night in Puvirnituq, we were pretty
happy with how much we’d seen, and hopefully we’d just be able to continue on tomorrow.
We woke up the next morning, checked the weather, and…
oh. It’s even worse. Needless to say, hopes were not high, but we walked to
the airport anyway to confirm, and yup we would not be heading to Kuujjuaq today.
With that, we decided to cut our losses and instead spend the rest of the time in Puvirnituq,
with the intention of doing what two aviation YouTubers do in a new place
and each of us making a special plane spotting video here.
That second day was pretty uneventful, with the winds being even higher,
there wasn’t much point in waiting to see something at the airport.
So we stopped at Northern for some more essentials, made some more friends who
definitely weren’t just after the groceries, and managed to keep our room for one more night.
The third day, the winds were a bit calmer, not by a whole lot, but enough that regular traffic was
able to make it in and out, resulting in the 23 minutes of wind noise I uploaded a few weeks ago.
Nevertheless, I’m really proud of some of this footage, and being able to say I’ve
both landed on a gravel runway on a 737 and spotted it for myself is pretty cool.
Eventually, the fourth and final day came around, and after those
3 solid days of overcast skies and absolutely unforgiving wind, the sun came out and it was
glorious. We took one last walk around the town to appreciate it in actual sunlight,
and it is a beautiful place when you’re not constantly fighting 100km/hr wind!
In all seriousness, Puvirnituq has some amazing natural beauty,
and everyone that we met was so friendly, if not a little confused as to why we were here.
With one last look out towards Hudson Bay, it was finally time to head home,
and instead of seeking shelter in the terminal between airplanes, we’d be flying on one.
Specifically, this 24-year-old De Havilland Canada Dash 8-300,
registered as Charlie Golf X-ray Alpha India. This Dash 8 was first delivered
to Tyrolean Airways in 1997, then flew with Austrian Arrows, and joined Air Inuit in 2010.
This flight that we’ll be taking does eventually get us to Montreal,
but it’s quite the milk run down the eastern coast of Hudson Bay.
I’ll tell you a bit more about the routing once we’re actually in the air though.
Now, the terminal in Puvirnituq is not the largest, but it’s very functional and,
as far as I could tell, serves the community’s needs. However, one thing may seem like it’s
missing as we lined up to board the aircraft. If you guessed no security checkpoint,
you’re exactly right. If I had to guess, it’s most likely not cost-effective to have CATSA
at every one of these smaller airports, and instead they actually did screen us at a later
stop before getting into Montreal. So, let’s finally go check out the Air Inuit Dash 8-300!
On these first few legs, Air Inuit actually has open seating,
and so I made a beeline for the rear exit row. Seat
10E has ample legroom for me, and this very nice view of the landing gear and back of the wing.
This is only the first of four flights today, so let’s just get right into it.
Here’s our departure from Puvirnituq, off of runway 19!
This milk run flight typically starts off in the community of Salluit,
then heads west to Ivujivik, south to Akulivik, and then to Puvirnituq.
For this first flight, we’d be heading south along the Hudson Bay coast to the community
of Inukjuak, with some absolutely breathtaking views along the way!
Like I said before, being able to see this in sunlight 100% makes up for those cloudy days.
Honestly, I was pretty speechless.
Spectacular views aside, I do have a seat to show you.
This exit row seat has a fairly standard tray table. In the seatback pocket is an
air sickness bag, a message from Air Inuit on keeping safe, and the Dash 8-300 safety card.
Due to ongoing events, Air Inuit wasn’t serving any food onboard,
but plenty of water bottles were handed out during each leg of the flight.
Surprisingly, this Dash 8 actually had USB ports at every seat!
That’s a very nice touch I wasn’t expecting.
Pretty soon, we began our descent, and here’s our arrival into Inukjuak, landing on runway 25.
Each of these stops were pretty short, but in the spirit of exploration,
I did ask our very friendly crew if I could take a look outside from the door,
and ended up getting to stand outside for a bit.
The village of Inukjuak is home to around 1800 people, and is served by this 3500 foot gravel runway at Inukjuak Airport.
In the early 20th century, a French fur trading company established a trading post here,
originally known as Port Harrison. The area continued to develop over
the decades, with Inukjuak being legally established as a municipality in 1980.
Air Inuit typically flies here twice a day,
stopping in on the northbound and southbound milk runs.
That little look outside done, it’s off to the
next stop! Here’s our departure from Inukjuak, taking off from runway 25.
After Inukjuak, our next stop was Umiujaq, a smaller community of around 400 people.
The cloud cover meant there wasn’t a whole lot to see on this leg, aside from Hudson Bay below.
With more bottles of water handed out, here’s the next landing on Umiujaq’s runway 20.
Umiujaq was established fairly recently in 1986, following the Quebec government’s
controversial construction of hydro-electric power stations
along La Grande Riviere as part of the James Bay Project in the 1970s.
With the threat of another proposed hydro-electric project along the Great Whale River,
near the Inuit village of Kuujjuarapik, many decided to relocate here, 160 kilometres north.
Speaking of Kuujjuarapik, that’s where we’re headed next!
Here’s our departure off of runway 20.
Once again, we had some great views of all these different islands along the coast,
and this being the shortest leg of them all, we were only cruising at 8,000 feet.
Arriving into Kuujjuarapik, which is below the tree line,
you can tell the landscape already looks much different! Here’s us landing on runway 03.
Now, for this stop in Kuujjuarapik, things were a bit different. Here, every passenger continuing on
to Montreal did actually have to leave the plane and head inside to claim any checked baggage.
Once that was done, then you would have to clear security before reboarding for this final leg.
Kuujjuarapik is the southernmost village in Nunavik, and is actually a bicultural community
of Cree and Inuit. The area has been home to both Inuit and Cree people for over 2800 years,
and in 1820, the Hudson’s Bay Company opened a trading post
on the site of what is now the town of Kuujjuarapik.
During World War II, the United States built a military base and airport here, which,
although I’m not 100% sure on this, probably explains the existence of this huge hangar!
For this final flight, we did have assigned seats, and I asked if I could get 1E,
the exit row at the very front. It’s got the excellent legroom you usually
get at the front of a Dash, along with a new view of the propeller!
For the final time in what feels like a super long video, here is our departure off of runway 03.
Even after those three previous flights, we were barely halfway to Montreal.
This next leg directly to YUL would take 2 and a half hours and was accompanied by…
You guessed it, more water! As you can imagine, food on this journey was provided exclusively
by the Northern store in Puvirnituq. The bulkhead row of the Dash 8 does
look slightly different, and the usual seatback pocket contents are just in the door instead.
The USB ports are still available though, just underneath the seat.
Most of Air Inuit’s Dash 8-300s seat 45 passengers in a one-class configuration.
Now, this is kind of interesting since most Dash 8-300s usually seat 50,
and they don’t have 5 seats across at the very back.
However, given the value of cargo space on these aircraft operating up north,
as we’ve established, some of these Dash 8s are actually modified with an expanded cargo hold.
This takes up what would usually be the rear galley as well as a few seats,
allowing Air Inuit to carry 4000 pounds of cargo in this expanded compartment.
Up front as well, is the usual Dash 8-sized lavatory.
With the majority of the journey behind us, the rest of the flight went by pretty quickly,
and we were treated to this beautiful sunset.
Pretty soon, the lights of Montreal finally appeared, and here is the
final arrival of these six hours on a Dash 8, onto Montreal-Trudeau Airport’s runway 24L.
Well, that was my northern adventure with Air Inuit!
What an amazing journey and what a story to tell!
As someone who’s fascinated with Northern Canada, this was an incredible privilege to visit,
and this was a trip that I’ll remember for a long time to come.
Despite everything that happened, I am very thankful that I was able to visit Nunavik,
and I can’t wait to go back sometime in the future.
Thank you so much for watching this Dash 8 milk run, especially if you
have made it all the way to the end, and I will see you next time.