Good morning from Kuujjuaq, Quebec!
My name is Alex, and this is going to be a… Very Northern Canadian flight.
I’m in the far north of Quebec after flying here on Air Inuit’s 737-200,
and there’s a lot more to their operation than just those classic jets.
In addition to their 737s, they also fly Dash 8s (which I flew on last year),
plus a few King Airs, and some of the most rugged airplanes Canadians have ever built - Twin Otters!
Air Inuit’s Twin Otters are a rare sight in the south,
and tend to fly exclusively up north providing direct connections between communities.
So, while I was there in April with my friend and fellow YouTube creator Mark Brandon,
we knew we wanted to experience the Twin Otter for ourselves. We ended up finding a
round-trip flight to Tasiujaq, a small village just 110 kilometres northwest of Kuujjuaq.
Tasiujaq is a village of only 400 people, and with our previous experiences of being stranded in
northern villages still very fresh in our minds, we were cautious with our flight choices. This
morning flight would only go straight there and straight back though so we figured we’d be okay.
The DHC-6 Twin Otter taking us there is this -300 model
registered as Charlie Golf Kilo Charlie Juliet, and first flew in 1980.
It started out in a much different climate, flying for Emirates Air Services in Abu Dhabi,
before returning to Canada in 1985, when it was taken up by Air Inuit.
Since then, it was occasionally leased out to other operators,
but has flown for Air Inuit for the better part of the last 37 years!
After a quick engine run-up on the other side of the ramp,
it taxied back over to the terminal for boarding.
Now even though it’s a very Canadian plane,
originally designed and built by De Havilland Canada in Downsview, Ontario,
I haven’t personally flown on a Twin Otter before, so I was pretty excited to hop on.
For most regional flights up north, there isn’t actually any security, so
it was just a matter of lining up with boarding passes, ID, and heading out to the Twin Otter!
Air Inuit has open seating on all of their Northern flights, and so I headed up front to
grab seat 2A, with an excellent view of the engine and the flight deck right in front.
Without the seat in front, the legroom is pretty roomy too!
A quick personalized safety briefing later, the two Pratt and Whitney PT-6s were fired up,
and we were off to Tasiujaq. Here’s the departure from Kuujjuaq off of runway 25.
Now if you didn’t already know, the Twin Otter was designed as a STOL or
Short TakeOff and Landing utility aircraft, hence the 14 second takeoff roll just then!
For that reason, it’s arguably one of the most versatile airplanes in the world,
and can be fitted with anything from tundra tires to skis and even floats.
If you hadn’t already noticed, there’s a very specific reason I chose this seat.
Air Inuit’s Twin Otters have a bubble window in this row,
meaning you can get views looking straight forward, and even straight down too!
With us flying only a thousand feet over the treetops,
this is easily the coolest window seat ever!
In the seatback pocket, Air Inuit still had the usual items,
including a safety card for the Twin Otter, an early 2020s vintage pamphlet,
this mask of some sort, and the air sickness bag.
The flight to Tasiujaq is only 30 minutes or so,
and I was well-amused just watching the terrain go by!
And yes, we really were only cruising at 1100 feet. That might seem low in other parts of
the world, but Northern Quebec as a whole is surprisingly flat, relatively speaking.
Plus, the Twin Otter, as versatile as it is,
doesn’t cruise terribly fast, so it didn’t seem like there was much point going any higher.
I will say though, it was super cool being able to follow along with what was going on up front
just by watching the GPS. It’s not every day you get to actually watch what’s going on!
Later in the flight, the visibility decreased a
bit. We stuck around at 1100 feet though, and so it’s kinda trippy to sit there,
feeling like you’re in clouds, and then a tree goes by not too far below.
Air Inuit’s Twin Otters seat 450 hold on, wrong video, *ahem* 19 passengers in a 2-1 layout.
The flight was fairly empty, with only 5 or 6 passengers on board,
and all of them opting for the side with two seats, unlike me.
However, these aren’t your normal commuter airline seats. They actually fold up to the
side so that the plane can be “converted” from passenger to cargo use in seconds.
Like most smaller airports in this part of Quebec,
Tasiujaq Airport has a single gravel runway that’s 3,500 feet long.
Thanks to the fresh snow though, it’s not super visible from where I was sitting,
and all I could see was the perimeter fencing and some barely visible runway lights.
Of course, that’s just business as usual for Air Inuit’s pilots,
and here’s the landing onto runway 05.
Before we left Kuujjuaq, we had the chance to talk with our crew a bit,
and explained the… ridiculousness of what we were doing.
So, once the engines stopped, we stepped outside into the snow, and got some photos with the plane!
We would’ve liked to have walked to the town, but the airport is about 3 kilometres away,
so it really does feel like the middle of nowhere!
Plenty of photos of the plane later, we shuffled into the terminal to take a look around there.
The village of Tasiujaq first came about following the opening of a school in Kuujjuaq in the 1950s,
and lots of Inuit families congregated there as a result. However, wildlife resources around
Kuujjuaq were somewhat scarce and many had to, quote, “rely on government allowances”.
So, it was decided that a new village would be created here on the shore of Leaf Lake,
and Tasiujaq, which means “resembling a lake”, was officially established in the late 1960s.
There wasn’t a lot to see beyond the airport thanks to the low visibility,
but with the fresh snow it is just unbelievably quiet here!
Settled back on board, that quiet was soon to be replaced with half an hour of PT-6s once again.
Less than 20 minutes after shutting down, here’s our departure back to Kuujjuaq off of runway 23.
For the flight back, I chose the bubble window on the opposite side to take in the sights again,
and obviously to watch up front.
This flight back was pretty similar to the first one,
and with only three new people boarding in Tasiujaq, it was pretty empty.
On a personal note, I’ve been working towards my instrument rating and commercial license
over the past little while, and after this, I kinda want to fly a Twin Otter!
It really is the embodiment of Canadian engineering,
built for flights exactly like this and for those to some even more remote places!
As we approach Kuujjuaq, I do just want to say that this whole thing was so much fun.
Air Inuit is phenomenal at what they do to connect the people of Nunavik, and I’ll always
remember that time that I flew with them to the middle of nowhere just to try the Twin Otter.
Here’s the arrival into Kuujjuaq, landing on runway 13.
Thank you so much for watching this… very random adventure with Air Inuit,
and I’ll see you next time.