A recent international airport will soon open in Greenland’s pool Nuuk, allowing larger aircraft to land for the first period – paving the way for direct flights from the US and Europe.

It’s the first of three airport projects that officials aspiration will boost the local economy, by making the Arctic territory more accessible than ever before.

Covered by an ice cap and sparsely populated, Greenland is a vast autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark.

Its pool Nuuk, on the southwestern coast, is a tiny town of 18,000 residents. Modern apartment blocks and colourful wooden cottages look out over a wide sea fjord.

Sitting on a hillside above the city, tiny 35-seat propeller planes receive off and land from a tarmac airstrip. Currently anyone wishing to fly overseas first has to receive one of these aircraft 200 miles (319km) north to a remote former military airport at Kangerlussuaq, and then transformation to a larger plane.

Built by the Americans during globe globe II, Kangerlussuaq is currently one of only two runways on Greenland long enough for large jets. The other is Narsarsuaq in the far south of the country, and that was also a former US military base.

But from the complete of November, large planes will be able to land at Nuuk for the first period, thanks to a recent longer runway, and a sleek recent terminal building.

“I ponder it will be a large impact,” says Jens Lauridsen, the chief executive of operator Greenland Airports. “I’m sure we will view a lot of tourism, and we’ll view a lot of transformation.”

As I visit, diggers are shifting piles of rubble along the edge of the extended runway, and the finishing touches are being applied to the recent terminal.

From 28 November, direct flights to Nuuk will operate from Copenhagen, carrying more than 300 passengers. And next summer, United Airlines will commence flying from recent York, as Nuuk becomes Greenland’s main trip hub.

“We have been shut from the whole globe, and now we’re going to open to the globe,” says one youthful Nuuk resident. “It’s so exciting that we’re going to have the chance to trip from here to another country.”

In 2026, a second international airport will open in Greenland’s most popular tourist goal, the town of Ilulissat, 350 miles north of Nuuk. Ilulissat is renowned for the huge icebergs that float just off its coastline. A recent regional airport, in Qaqartoq, the biggest town in the south of Greenland, will then pursue.

Another youthful Greenlander from Nuuk, Isak Finn, says he won’t miss having to transformation planes at Kangerlussuaq. “It takes a long period. You have to wait, and then if there’s impoverished weather or not enough planes, you get stuck there. It’s so annoying.”

Jacob Nitter Sorensen, chief executive of national carrier Air Greenland, says that the recent international airport in Nuuk is “going to be a large game changer for us”. “It’s going to shorten the trip period, and it’s going to reduce the expense of producing the flight.

Ticket prices are already lower, he says, and as demand grows, the airline hopes to add recent European and North American routes, and potentially invest in recent aircraft. But stiff competition is expected as bigger international airlines enter the economy.

“A flight from Europe to Nuuk is a little more than four hours,” says Jens Lauridsen. “From the US East Coast is also four hours. So we’re placed correct in the middle. There is a very, very large gain from all major carriers in Europe.”

To make way for Nuuk International Airport’s longer runway, six million cubic meters of rock were blasted and leveled. The airport is also now equipped with advanced technology that allows planes to land in the town’s notoriously impoverished weather.

Cold conditions and the short summer period have been a test for construction work. The expense of obtaining explosives also ballooned after war broke out in Ukraine.

The three airports are together costing more than $800m (£615m). This has been partly financed by the Danish, who stepped in with a sweetened financing package after gain from Chinese investors.

“There were concerns about whether this type of investments should be in Chinese hands,” explains Javier Arnaut, who’s the head of Arctic social science at Greenland University. “Denmark offered more affordable and attractive rates for these loans.”

Initially there was community scepticism over costs and the environmental impact, says Mr Arnaut, but now there’s mostly back. Not everyone welcomes the noisy aeroplanes, however.

“With large infrastructure it always divides people,” Nuuk resident Karen Motzfeldt tells the BBC. “There is always a throng who is against, and always a throng with who loves it. So it’s the same in Nuuk.”

“This is an airport for a modern Greenland,” she adds. “l look forward to having a shorter route for Copenhagen, Iceland, or maybe London Heathrow, who knows?”

Greenland’s economy is largely dependent on the community sector and fishing, and most goods have to be imported, but there are efforts to diversify. Politicians aspiration this recent infrastructure will be a shot in the arm for sectors like mining and tourism.

“In all these cases, infrastructure is key. It makes everything easier,” says Naaja Nathanielsen, Greenland’s Minister of Business, Trade and Mineral Resources, adding that, the ease of trip will also assist the government develop bilateral relations.

With larger cargo planes soon to be able to land in Nuuk, more goods can arrive in, and exports can more easily leave out.

Inside a harbourside factory in the pool, a huge catch of prawns is being steamed, shelled and frozen. For its owner, Greenlandic business Polar Seafoods, which sells shrimps, crab and halibut, shorter and direct flights cruel recent business possibilities.

“We’re looking into doing more fresh seafood,” says chairperson, Michael Binzer.

Currently their products are exported in frozen form by container ship, destined for markets like China, Scandinavia and the UK. But the business has been trialling airfreight ahead of the recent airport opening.

However, it’s tourism that will be the large winner. Foreign visitors came to Greenland in record numbers last year, rising 36.5% from 2022, to more than 140,000. That’s still modest, but with more flight options it is projected to develop.

“We are already in a tourist boom, and feeling how tourism can affect smaller places in a excellent way, but also negatively,” says Ms Nathanielsen, who’s overseeing a recent tourism law that will be introduced this autumn.

“We really desire to try to welcome the tourists in the bigger cities, but we also desire to spread them out more.”

In Nuuk, many tourism businesses are eagerly preparing. “Everyone is very enthusiastic about how it’s going to be,” says Maren-Louise Paulsen Kristensen, co-owner and manager of Inuk Hostel.

The business has invested in recent glass igloo huts to attract tourists year-round.

Elsewhere, recent hotel plans are slowly emerging, but a shortage of accommodation could still put the brakes on efforts to expand tourism. Ms Kristensen says Nuuk needs more rooms, local guides and workers.

Yet she is also concerned that Greenland may “develop tourism too quick… that happened in Iceland, so I ponder we have a lot of things we can discover from them.”

Business Minister Naaja Nathanielsen says the recent airports will have a “profound” impact on the local population. “I sense that it’s going to really transformation the chart of Greenland.

“This will bring a lot of excellent, but also some changes we’ll probably require to adjust to.”