Nuuk Airport unable to service large airliners or flights reaching Denmark or other countries. In connection with events are chartered aircraft or VIP flights unable to reach Nuuk. A change to a small local aircraft (normally at Kangerlussuaq Airport) is always needed. A large expansion of the airport has been controversial due to the approach near the urbanized area of the outlying districts of Nuuk, although the issue continues to be a subject of internal debate in Greenland. In the early 1960s, after the establishment of Air Greenland on 7 November 1960 as Grønlandsfly, Nuuk was served exclusively by the PBY Catalina
Nuuk Airport flying boat, with the aircraft using the waterways of the Nuuk Port as a landing site. In 1962 a PBY Catalina crashed near the port, killing 15 people on board. The tragedy was one of the factors leading to the decision to invest in a helicopter fleet. The Sikorsky S-61N machines—still in use in 2010—proved to be a more reliable mode of transport for the city, providing exclusive service for the Nuuk city for more than a decade—from the purchase date in 1965 until the late 1970s. Even in the later era of the fixed-wing, turboprop plane domination, the S-61N