Good morning from Montreal, Quebec! My name is Alex,
and today’s flight has been a long time coming.
Last year, my good friend Mark Brandon and I attempted to visit the largest town in Nunavik,
the region of Quebec that’s north of the 55th parallel.
That town is Kuujjuaq, situated in the northeast of the province just inland from Ungava Bay,
and is home to over 2,000 people.
It serves as a major hub for the region, especially because it’s the only town up
there that has a paved runway. Now, that’s quite an important detail because Nunavik
consists of only 14 communities, with no roads between them or to the rest of the country.
Hence, air travel is absolutely essential here, and that’s where Inuit-owned airline
Air Inuit comes in, with their fleet of King Airs, Twin Otters, Dash 8s, and 737s.
Last August, Mark and I tried flying to Kuujjuaq with a connection in another
town called Puvirnituq on the Hudson Bay coast. But, after landing there,
extremely high winds meant that we were essentially stranded for a couple days.
So, having learned absolutely nothing from that experience,
we still wanted to try again to visit Kuujjuaq, and today we’re gonna do just that!
Specifically, we’ll be doing that flying on board this Boeing 737-200 Combi,
registered as Charlie Golf Sierra Papa Whiskey.
This now 40-year-old 737 is full of history, and has only ever flown with Canadian operators. That
includes Pacific Western, Eastern Provincial Airways, Canadian Airlines International,
Air Canada and Canadian North, before it joined Air Inuit in 2018.
It’s the same one that we flew on on last year’s adventure to Puvirnituq,
but a 737-200 is a 737-200 and you really can’t be too picky! Let’s go visit Kuujjuaq!
Today’s combi configuration had three pallets of cargo in the front, and 60 seats in the back for
a nearly 50/50 split of passengers and cargo. And, fun fact, because these planes are combis,
they still have the smaller overhead bins so that the entire cabin can be used for cargo if need be.
My seat for today is 15F, and the legroom here is very generous, with space for my knees,
plus this excellent view of the wing and thrust reverser!
Now, especially in 2022, Canada is a very unique case where you can still find plenty
of these original 737s. I’ve had the privilege of flying on the -200 a few
times already, and have talked about it… quite a lot in previous videos.
But, because they are a uniquely Canadian thing in this day and age,
and are such a different flying experience from today’s airliners,
every single flight on one of these planes is super special to me. So the fact is,
as long as they’re still around, I’m going to take every opportunity I can to fly on, and document,
the 737-200! And, if I can explore some more of Canada’s fascinating north, even better!
Here’s our departure from Montreal, off of runway 24L.
Instead of following the Hudson Bay Coast like last year, this time we’re actually
headed eastbound first, with a stop in Quebec City and then north to Kuujjuaq from there.
With only half an hour or so in the air between Montreal and Quebec City,
there wasn’t any sort of in-flight service.
However, there was just enough time to take a look at the seatback pocket contents.
On today’s flight, Air Inuit had this pamphlet on keeping safe,
this air sickness bag, and the 737-200’s safety card.
As we make our way along the Saint Lawrence, it’s worth mentioning that this route
might be the last, easily accessible 737-200 flight for aviation enthusiasts,
at least within North America.
They fly this route from Montreal to Quebec City to Kuujjuaq once a week with the 737-200,
and, at least at the time of uploading, you can actually book the legs between Montreal
and Quebec City, for a more reasonable price.
The only downsides are that it’s a bit short and there’s obviously no service on these legs,
but if you haven’t flown on a 737-200 yet, this might just be the way to do it.
Today though, it’s just the first leg of our journey,
so here’s the arrival into Quebec City, landing on runway 29.
This stop in Quebec City was relatively short,
and all passengers continuing on to Kuujjuaq were supposed to stay on board.
A handful of new people eventually boarded, and some additional cargo was loaded too.
Also, since last year’s flight, Air Inuit has brought back their onboard meals,
so I was very much looking forward to seeing what they’d have to offer on this longer leg!
Here’s our departure from Quebec City, off of runway 24.
Shortly after takeoff, the smell of hot food filled the cabin,
and the crew handed out these quite elaborate (and complimentary) meal trays.
Inside the container was some plastic cutlery, a wipe, this bread roll, some macaroni salad,
a toasted cracker, cheese, butter, and the main course,
plus this small chocolate cake for dessert.
The main course was meatballs with rice and broccoli with teriyaki sauce.
It was piping hot and tasted really good once I mixed it up.
This right here, is one of the many things I love about Northern Canadian airlines. Complimentary
Economy Class meals on domestic flights have pretty much gone by the wayside everywhere else
in North America, so the fact that they’re still around in this part of the world is pretty sweet.
You could argue that it may be more of a necessity than anything,
since most northern Canadian airports don’t exactly have a lot in the way of food options.
Now, here’s something I did not expect to find on a 40-year-old airplane.
Believe it or not, Air Inuit has a wifi-based entertainment system on some of their aircraft,
including this 737-200! Somehow I completely missed this last year,
or it just wasn’t working then, but this kinda blew me away.
There were plenty of new releases to watch,
plus the usual TV shows, as well as some exclusively Inuit content.
There’s also a ton of information about Nunavik, the airline itself,
and about every destination that it serves.
rest of the country, and so reading about Inuit culture and the history
of Nunavik’s settlements genuinely had me hooked for the rest of the flight.
Do stick around after the landing shot for some of our exploring around Kuujjuaq!
We eventually made our way down through the clouds, and here’s
our arrival onto a very snowy runway 07.
So, that was flying on a 737-200 in 2022! What an experience that was,
especially sitting in that particular row! Since you’re pretty much right in
line with the thrust reversers, the landings are… loud to say the least.
Especially now that their food is back, Air Inuit has a very impressive onboard offering, and that
coupled with the rarity of the 737-200 meant it really couldn’t get much better than that!
It’s safe to say that Air Inuit’s one the most unique airlines in Canada,
and I was very glad to have flown with them again!
With that, it was time to say goodbye to the 732 (for now) and take a brief
walk across the ramp in some, well, not entirely unexpected conditions.
Kuujjuaq Airport’s history dates back to World War II. In 1942,
the United States Army Air Force built the airstrip as part of the Crimson Route project,
which was a planned air transport route between the US and Northern Europe. With the introduction
of a quicker route through the Azores later in the war, the project never did develop completely,
but the airport was still constructed, and handed over to Canada at the end of the war.
Today, it serves as Air Inuit’s northern base of operations,
and hosts some surprisingly diverse traffic.
Every time either one of us goes someplace new, Mark and I usually end up filming a plane spotting
compilation of all the normal traffic that an airport gets. We started off our Kuujjuaq
videos right away with the 737 departing back to the south, and the list only grew from there.
Because it is, again, the only airport in Nunavik with a paved runway,
Kuujjuaq Airport also has regular flights from Canadian North’s 737-400 Combi where
they fly nonstop to Montreal and to Iqaluit too.
Along with the paved runway, 07-25, there’s also a shorter, gravel runway that runs roughly
east-west. That’s runway 13-31, and sees plenty of use from Air Inuit Dash 8s and Twin Otters.
Kuujjuaq Airport also has a Nav Canada flight service station.
Other airports in Nunavik like Puvirnituq have a UNICOM where somebody from the
community gives advisory information to pilots, but because Kuujjuaq is the
busiest airport in the region, the level of traffic does warrant a Nav Canada presence.
Visitors to the Kuujjuaq are welcomed by this huge inukshuk at the entrance,
and close by was the hotel we stayed at, the Auberge Kuujjuaq Inn.
As far as Northern hotels go, this was really nice, and also had a restaurant
on the ground floor. It had some very tasty choices, although it was mostly
southern food, and we were admittedly hoping to have something a bit more local.
Kuujjuaq has quite a few services typical of a larger town,
including car rental, so playing tourist was a bit easier for us this time around !
And for those curious, food prices, as you would expect, are quite a bit higher than down south.
As for gas prices, it was… well, actually cheaper than a couple places down south at the time, but
we were told that gas up here usually gets bought a year in advance, so I doubt it stayed that way.
We spent a total of three nights here,
with a mixture of plane spotting and just driving around and seeing as much as we could,
including the very-much frozen river from this port just north of the town.
Kuujjuaq sits just below the 60th parallel, at 58 degrees north, however it is still below the
tree line, and so the scenery felt almost a bit more familiar than the tundra of Puvirnituq.
But even then, what I love about Nunavik is the vast unspoiled wilderness everywhere you look,
and the complete silence of winter along with it.
It’s a gorgeous and frankly, under-visited part of Canada,
and I couldn’t have been happier that we finally made it here.
Our trip home involved another unnecessarily complicated routing
and a new aircraft type for me, but that’s a story for another time.
Thank you all so much for watching, and honestly for making crazy stuff like this possible,
and I will see you in the next one!