Why is Narsarsuaq not listed as an ETOPS alternate?
Narsarsuaq (BGBW/UAK) offers itself as an ETOPS alternate but the Attwooll paper cited above estimated that it would be unusable as an alternate more than 50% of the time, explained as follows: “The very high probability of outage of Narssarssuaq arises from the high minima requires for unfamiliar pilots to land at this airfield, due in turn to the difficult terrain and absence of landing aids.” The remainder of the paper does not consider Narsarsuaq as an ETOPS alternate. The airport also has a very short runway and often-poor weather.
