Nuuk international airport to the northeast of the town centre. Built in 1979, it is a hub for Air Greenland, which is also headquartered in Nuuk, and operates its technical base at the airport. There are flights inside Greenland and to Iceland. There is a decision to extend the runway so that there can be flights to European destinations like Denmark. As a result of the high cost of flying goods to Greenland, Nuuk and other towns in Greenland are connected to Denmark by cargo vessels which sail mainly from Aalborg during the warmer months after the winter ice has melted.
Capital city prime economic, cultural, or intellectual centres of a nation or an empire are sometimes referred to as primate cities. Examples are Athens, Bangkok, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Copenhagen, Cairo, London, Mexico City, Paris, Seoul and Tokyo. News media will often use the name of a capital city as an alternative name for the country of which it is the capital or of the government that is seated there, as a form of metonymy. For example, "relations between Washington and London" refer to "relations between the United States and the United Kingdom". The word "capital" derives from the Latin "caput" (genitive "capitis"),