Every once in awhile I'll check to see if the Weather Channel has anything worthwhile, and I was excited to notice this series' stop in Greenland, a country that interests me.
We hone in here on flights of a stolid crew that frequents arctic locales, traveling in a bunker-like prop plane dubbed the "water bomber."
Seemingly for no other reason than to face the challenge, the crew is heading toward Narsarsuaq Airport in southern Greenland, which, according to Wikipedia, is one of only two airports on the mini-continent capable of serving large airliners. With little more than a runway on a fjord, there's "no room to abort a landing" once a pilot commits, we're told.
After a four-hour flight from Labrador, the red and white-striped clunker approaches a forbidding landscape of mountain cliffs, glaciers, and icebergs."Beauty," says the pilot as he touches down, inspiring admiration of his sangfroid.
The episode incongruously includes glimpses of Legoland in Denmark and the series' headquarters in Yellowknife, Canada. How much more interesting it would have been to include something of life in Greenland, maybe a stop at a restaurant or a local store. One could come away from this show thinking Greenland totally uninhabited!
The program ends with a visit to six-hours-distant Iceland and its runway, which looks like Disneyland compared to Greenland's. But the credits roll without any more footage of that lovely land. Someone, please get this show a cure for tunnel vision!
We hone in here on flights of a stolid crew that frequents arctic locales, traveling in a bunker-like prop plane dubbed the "water bomber."
Seemingly for no other reason than to face the challenge, the crew is heading toward Narsarsuaq Airport in southern Greenland, which, according to Wikipedia, is one of only two airports on the mini-continent capable of serving large airliners. With little more than a runway on a fjord, there's "no room to abort a landing" once a pilot commits, we're told.
After a four-hour flight from Labrador, the red and white-striped clunker approaches a forbidding landscape of mountain cliffs, glaciers, and icebergs."Beauty," says the pilot as he touches down, inspiring admiration of his sangfroid.
The episode incongruously includes glimpses of Legoland in Denmark and the series' headquarters in Yellowknife, Canada. How much more interesting it would have been to include something of life in Greenland, maybe a stop at a restaurant or a local store. One could come away from this show thinking Greenland totally uninhabited!
The program ends with a visit to six-hours-distant Iceland and its runway, which looks like Disneyland compared to Greenland's. But the credits roll without any more footage of that lovely land. Someone, please get this show a cure for tunnel vision!