If you want to explore remote destinations, like Christmas Island, Greenland or the Faroe Islands, your choice of airlines will be severely limited.
While carriers will occasionally test the market with unusual routes — United Airlines (UAL) recently announced one between Newark (EWR) and the Greenland capital of Nuuk (GOH) — the few travelers who make the trip usually mean that any flights will often be temporary and limited in scope.
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Remember that Faroe Islands flight? It’s been cut.
In August 2023, local Faroe Islands carrier Atlantic Airways started a new seasonal route between the island of Vágar and Stewart International Airport (SWF), 90 minutes northwest of Manhattan.
The smaller island on the Danish autonomous territory where the airport is located is 45 minutes outside the Faroe Islands capital, Tórshavn.
The flight, which was operated on an Airbus A320neo (EADSY) plane with 174 economy seats, ran for two seasons between May and October. (Later in the year the weather turns too cold to visit the northern territory without special winter gear.)
Now that the 2024 season is complete, Atlantic Airways confirmed that the flight will not be brought back in 2025 after demand failed to hit the mark the carrier had expected.
The route, the only direct flight to the Faroe Islands from the U.S., was targeted at Americans interested in exploring the Faroe Islands. Before it launched, the only way to get there was through a Scandinavian capital like Copenhagen or Oslo.
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Chief Executive Jóhanna á Bergi issued a statement confirming that “demand for this route has been lower than what we had hoped for.”
She did leave open the possibility that the flight would return at some point, though it won’t be in the coming year. The airline’s executives are assessing the route's potential for later.
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Faroe Islands in mind? Here's how to get there
When the flight was unveiled in 2023, á Bergi had said ["interest] for this new route is very high on both sides of the Atlantic."
Atlantic Airways, the primary carrier for the Faroe Islands, will continue running flights to Vágar from European cities like Copenhagen, Oslo, Reykjavik, Edinburgh and Paris.
Estimates show that more than 110,000 visitors come to the Faroe Islands every year, with the numbers having grown since the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020. Tourist demand for the Faroe Islands from the U.S. has been growing but not in numbers large enough for Atlantic Airways to justify the flight.
Other airlines that serve the remote territory, which is home to around 54,000 permanent residents, include Icelandair, Scandianavian Airlines (more commonly known as SAS) and Norwegian regional airline Widerøe.
In May 2024, Icelandair also launched a new route between Vágar Airport (FAE) and Reykjavik that ran up to three times a week during the summer season before being retired for the colder months.
Added to existing flights to Copenhagen and Billund, this flight made Vágar the third destination in Denmark that was also chosen due to growing tourist interest in the country.
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