Because of the length of the runway, the cold winters, and proximity to Europe, Iqaluit is a popular destination for cold weather testing of new aircraft.  In the last few years we've seen the Boeing 777, new helicopter designs from Eurocopter, and of course, the Airbus A380.  The largest passenger plane in the world, the A380 dwarfed just about everything when it underwent cold weather testing in the winters of 2006 and 2007. This photo from Airliners.net.

With a wingspan of 80 metres and weighing in at 273 tonnes, its a big one. It is the world's first full "double-decker" passenger airliner.   You can compare it to the Boeing 747 by clicking here.

Airliners.net has a couple of nice photos of the A380 in Iqaluit. Click here and here. Here's a slideshow that shows the Airbus A-380 against the Iqaluit terminal building. For a bit of "live action", check out TAKEOFF and LANDING videos taken during the testing. Below, here's a few collected from the Airbus visit to Iqaluit.  Click on image to enlarge:

The Antonov AN-124-100 has been in Iqaluit a number of times.  It is one of the world's largest transport aircraft. Here, it is opening the hatch to unload a Eurocopter helicopter for a couple of weeks of cold weather testing in January of 2006.

Here's a photo of it just getting ready to take off after unloading the Eurcopter. The odd colour is from the late afternoon (i.e. 13:00 ET) light in Iqaluit. Winter days are very short.

The new Boeing 747-8F freighter was in Iqaluit for a quick overnight cold weather test on March 14, 2011.

Chris Harbord got some great video of it departing runway 35 on March 15th.  Temperature at the time -  -27 degrees celcius.

The test A380 was back in Iqaliut in January of 2013. They were testing a new Rolls-Royce engine.  They were here for a stretch of -30 degress centigrade weather.