The German airline Discover has launched a new passenger flight route between the federal republic and Alta, a city in the Norweigan Arctic Circle.
Discover Airlines, a subsidiary of Lufthansa, has announced that it will launch a direct, commercial flight running from Frankfurt to Alta, Norway, which lies within the Arctic Circle. Part of the Finnmark province, Alta sits slightly below the 70th latitude, meaning it is closer to the North Pole than to the British Isles and central Europe.
The Frankfurt-based airline will run twice weekly flights from December 2024 until April 2025, with the journey between Alta and the German airport taking around 3,5 hours. “Scandinavia’s unique nature has never been this accessible,” the airline says.
This means the first flights to Alta will be possible while the region is in its polar night, which lasts from November 26 until January 17. It is dark during this period and the sun never fully rises. The route offered by Discover will end shortly before Alta enters its polar day period, when the sun remains visible at midnight local time, from May 18 to July 27.
The Arctic Circle encompasses the northernmost parts of Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.
For this reason, it is a classic spot to watch the Northern Lights glimmer and is home to the world’s first Aurora Borealis observatory. Whale watching, and visits to the Jøkkelfjord Glacier, the Northern Light Cathedral and the Alta Museum are among other attractions.
Traditions of Sami people, an Indigenous group in northern Europe, continue to shape Alta today. Reindeer herding has been part of the Sami tradition in Alta for over 10.000 years, but as climate change causes the Arctic tree line to move north, the tradition and the reindeer population are under threat.
According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) the average temperature in the Arctic has risen at four times the global average, meaning the Arctic is warming faster than any other region on Earth.
Thumb image credit: The Arctic / Shutterstock.com