High school math — popular opinion says you have to be good at it to be an aviator. Many aviators will tell you it’s rarely at the forefront of their mind. But most of them have not spent much time in the hover at night over the Labrador Sea.
Water temperature: 5 C (41 F) at best. Go into that and even in your aircrew dry suit you’ll be lucky to last 30 minutes.
For the Air Greenland crew hoisting a fishing trawler crew member into their helicopter, high school math is what they depended on to get them the 160 nautical miles (300 kilometers) out there, and it’s what will make sure they get all the way back before their fuel runs out.
“It was a Canadian trawler which was 190 nautical miles [350 kilometers] west of the coast of Greenland,” explained Petrus Nobréus, an Air Greenland H225 AWSAR (all weather search-and-rescue) captain who has spent 20 years flying in the country.
“If they can sail at 10 knots and it takes us three hours to be there, they can reduce the distance from 190 to 160 nautical miles.”
After refueling at Aasiaat, the crew headed west into the Davis Strait, with the ship making a steady 10 knots towards them. The distance to the rendezvous and the distance back would be the same, but the time taken and the fuel required would depend on the wind. At 70 degrees north, the weather isn’t exactly predictable.
The math checked out.
“We just sent down the basket and the patient was escorted up to the basket, into the basket, and we took the basket up and started flying back to Ilulissat,” Nobréus said. “It was a really quick one. We just went into position, basket down, patient up, and away.”
Ninety seconds over target and a seamless redezvous with the ambulance waiting at the airport. A textbook execution of a search-and-rescue (SAR) mission.
An evolving fleet
Since 2013, Air Greenland’s SAR aircraft of choice had been the stalwart Sikorsky S-61, which the company had operated in other roles as far back as 1965. But that all changed in December 2020 with the adoption of the Airbus Helicopters H225 AWSAR. For the pilots who had operated the S-61 since the SAR contract began in 2013, and the dedicated team of technicians who maintain the aircraft, it was much more than an equipment upgrade.
“The [H225 AWSAR] platform is all-weather SAR, fully de-iced aircraft with auto hover, which we didn’t have on the 61,” Nobréus said. “We actually had none of it. So it was a lot of hand flying all the time. And there’s a huge difference in how we operate today. The missions were the same, but the platform is totally different.”
The old approach required constant planning against the arctic weather, routing around systems to avoid conditions that would present a hazard to an aircraft unequipped to protect itself against the extremes that might be encountered.
“Now we can go into icing conditions, even to severe icing conditions, which means that we can go directly to a position,” Nobréus explained. “On the [S-]61 we still flew, but we had to stay out of the clouds, because if we went into the clouds with a non-deiced aircraft, you would fall out of the clouds.”
Carl Boström, a senior first officer with 12 years at Air Greenland, has flown across most of the island during his progression from the Airbus Helicopters AS350 through the Bell 212 to the H225 AWSAR. When asked to describe flying in Greenland, he didn’t have to think for long.
“Remote, in one word,” he said. “Say a minute or two after you take off, you’re just out. Nothing. It’s just wilderness.”
Greenland is the least densely populated country on earth, with a population of just 56,000 people and a land area of 770,000 square miles (two million square kilometers). Air Greenland operates across this vast expanse with three helicopter types: Nine H125s conducting aerial work, several H155s replacing its older Bell 212s flying passenger transport and providing limited SAR (LIMSAR) capability in the south, and two H225 AWSARs based at Kangerlussuaq, for 24/7 all-weather SAR coverage. Even at 67 degrees north there is still around 1,200 miles (1,930 km) to Greenland’s northern border. Not that it’s easy to tell how far things are up here.
“There’s really nothing to compare distance and sizes with,” Boström explained. “When you fly in Norway, Sweden, or in the U.K. or wherever, usually you have roads, trees, houses, all that kind of stuff that makes you get a perspective of how far away [things are], but how big is a rock? You have no idea.”
Weather considerations
The geography creates challenges beyond navigation. The weather observation network that pilots elsewhere take for granted simply doesn’t exist across most of Greenland.
“Flying here in Greenland, weather wise, it’s changing very fast and it’s powerful weather changes,” Nobréus explained. “The low pressure systems are very deep and with the distances, we don’t have very many observations.
Every morning at Kangerlussuaq, the SAR crew conducts a weather briefing that covers the entire island, because they have no idea where the call will take them.
“At Kangerlussuaq, we have two H225s, but it’s only one crew at work,” Nobréus explained. “We have one captain, one first officer, and two cabin hoist operators. So there is no backup. And that means that we need to know the weather in all of Greenland.”
The briefing process sets the crew’s weather expectations, but it also informs them about how much they can trust their own predictions once they are out in the environment. Once dispatched, they could be out for a long time. Options if they are caught out could be very limited indeed, so decisions and contingencies must be identified and agreed now.
Paw Hjortstrom is one of Air Greenland’s hoist instructors. Lloyd Horgan Photo Carl Bostrom, senior first officer at Air Greenland. Lloyd Horgan Photo Minik Thode Davidsen works as a hoist operator for Air Greenland. Lloyd Horgan Photo Petrus Nobreus, Air Greenland H225 AWSAR captain. Lloyd Horgan Photo
“Everything is set on models and a few observations, but the quality of them is not very high, which means that when we go fly, we often don’t have accurate weather,” explained Nobréus. “The distances are so far that we’re passing through different frontal systems and that is the challenge: the weather and the fuel; what is the plan B; where should we go.”
Very few people have to make life-critical decisions in conditions of such ambiguity, and the potential consequences of even a minor error are serious. But when friends ask Nobréus if he’s ever afraid flying into Arctic blizzards in darkness, his answer often surprises them.
“I say, ‘No, actually not,’ ” he said. “I’m much more afraid when I’m home, what can happen in the streets, than what can happen up here. Maybe it sounds a bit strange, but that’s how I look at it, because up here you’re in control of things, and you know what you’re doing.”
That mindset comes just as much from knowing what isn’t possible as understanding what is; the capabilities and limitations not only of the organization’s equipment, but also themselves.
“It’s a risk, but it’s a calculated risk,” Nobréus explained. “I think [it’s] the most important thing, in my opinion, and my motto is it’s even more important to know what I can’t do.”
Those factors influencing performance vary not only with the conditions, the person, and the day in question, but also with the location. With 12 years in Greenland, Boström’s path through the fleet has given him intimate knowledge of the island’s geography and weather.
“With the [AS]350 I flew almost all the way around the whole island,” he said. “And with the [Bell] 212, you work in the smaller districts, you fly people and you fly mail cargo. So you get to know all the little settlements as well.”
But the path to that knowledge contains moments of stark education. Boström recalled an incident during his first season when unexpected 45- to 50-knot headwinds transformed a routine flight into a fuel emergency.
“Suddenly we just ended up with a 45- to 50-knot headwind and I was like, ‘Where did that come from?’ ” said Boström. I started to realize that, ok, this is actually going really, really slow and it’s actually pretty far back to where we came from.”
Where elsewhere a change in the weather might be a minor inconvenience or an embarrassing contingency, the vast expanse of Greenland transforms it into a major emergency.
“If you screw up at home, you just land at a farm or by a roadside, and somebody has to drive a barrel of fuel for you,” said Boström. “And you’ll be ashamed and you’re going to get some pointers from your boss, but everyone’s ok. That’s not how it works here.”
Quite apart from the lack of farmland and roads to land on, is the tyranny of distance.
“In this specific situation it would have taken the 212 three hours of flying time to get fuel for us to get back,” explained Boström. “Suddenly there’s a whole other level of organization that comes to mind.”
And in the arctic tundra, such eventualities go far beyond being just commercial considerations.
“In the winter if it’s -40 [C/-40 F], then you have to consider the risks of ending up on the ice cap, because there is no one else that can pick us up,” Nobréus explained. “If you have a blizzard or the wind blowing 50 knots and you have minus [40 temperature] then you have a wind chill of -60, -70 degrees — and that is lethal.”
Accordingly, the crews must be prepared to protect themselves against the elements.
“We have survival bags with sleeping bags, survival kits, tents, that kind of stuff. It has to be in the helicopter all the time,” said Boström. “And we always have a rifle in the helicopter.”
The mandatory carriage of a high-power firearm is there to protect against another hazard entirely.
“The rifle is there if we end up somewhere in polar bear land,” Boström explained. “Well, the whole of Greenland is polar bear land, but there are certain areas where it’s much more dense.”
Work in the cabin
For Paw Hjortstrøm, one of Air Greenland’s hoist instructors, the transition from the S-61 presented him with an opportunity to fulfil a lifelong ambition.
“On the S-61, you had to be a mechanic to be a hoist operator,” Paw explained. “So I wasn’t able to join back then, but I wanted so much to be a part of it.”
Beyond career progression, the new contract presented opportunities for Air Greenland to expand their team’s skills, as well as their careers.
“In the old setup they didn’t do any medics, so we thought it was necessary to do some first aid at the point where you get the passenger,” Hjortstrøm explained. “We built the program from the ground up. Now if they have any kind of broken leg or a wound or something like that, then we are able to assist them.”
While the program of medical training has improved the crews’ capability to provide initial first aid, there is still a desire to improve the level of care they can provide without picking up a doctor or nurse from one of the regional or city hospitals.
“We are looking into paramedic education, but it takes quite a few years to be a paramedic,” explained Hjortstrøm. “So, we took some things out of the paramedic education, and tried to work it into our schedules.”
Any level of medical training requires the means to get to the scene, and that’s where Air Greenland’s H225 AWSARs shine.
“The interface, the autopilot system, the all-weather possibilities with anti-icing on the rotors, are all definitely key up here,” explained Boström. “Because you get icing here all year round, anywhere.”
As is often the case, the automation comes into its own when pilot workload is at its peak. In an environment like this, pilots can find instrument flying skills in demand even in visual conditions, if low contrast terrain and cloud blend to degrade their visual perception.
“The automation really helps out at night flight and bad visibility conditions because [it] can do things which I can’t,” Nobréus said. “If I don’t have any references, if I can’t see anything, I cannot hover. The automation, it can do it all the time.”
While modern, the Air Greenland H225 AWSARs are yet to be equipped with one tool that has become a staple of 24/7 SAR operations: night vision goggles (NVG) and electro-optical camera systems. They are due to be equipped this year.
“When we receive the NVG and the FLIR camera, I think we will have a higher, safer margin for our operation, especially for the aircraft, that we will be able to make an emergency landing in the terrain at night with the NVG,” Nobréus said. “And in regards to the FLIR, it will help us to find persons in the terrain faster.”
The technology will almost certainly prove critical to their ability to respond to calls for help, wherever they might come from across Greenland’s vast territory. But sometimes the enablers presented by the hardware actually make some aspects of flying life-saving missions more of a challenge.
“The hardest part is to say, when you are out of time to save this person, now we have to return to base,” Nobréus said. “But still, it’s a part of the game and we need to go to refuel. We need to think of the safety of our own, because nobody will say thank you if the SAR helicopter went out and crashed.”
All critical-mission operations come with their own unique challenges. No two are the same. But there is a common thread among them all.
“The pride is to be a part of the crew and have a successful mission when you come back here and you can feel that you made a difference for someone else, for the person in need and for their family,” Nobréus explained. “When you have a successful rescue, you can really feel it inside your heart that this went really well, and there’s a lot of people getting affected by your mission.”