Musselwhite is a fly-in fly-out operation using the Opapimiskan Lake Airport. The rotations for production and maintenance crews are generally 12-hour days 14-in 14-out. Due to the mine being a year-round operation these rotations entitle 168 working hours every 28 days, comparable to a standard 40-hour work week. This is in contrast to seasonal jobs in logging, oil drilling and mineral exploration where the rotations have longer "in" times but only run for part of the year. Transportation of personnel is contracted to Wasaya Airways. The Dash 8 300 series was purchased by the airway specifically for the transportation of personnel from Thunder Bay to the mine. Other service points to the mine include Pickle Lake and Sioux Lookout. Material (fuel, parts, explosives, reactants for processing, etc.) transportation is done by truck from the south. Due to the remote nature of the area any vehicles coming to the mine are required to contact a member of the security team before leaving Pickle Lake and embarking onto the Northern Ontario Resource Trail. Approximately 150 km from Pickle Lake traffic leaves the Northern Ontario Resource Trail and enters the mine road, travelling the remaining 43 km to the mine. Traffic arriving at the site then notifies the security team of their arrival, due to non-existent cellphone reception at the site or along the road a log of traffic must be kept. If a traveller has been out on the road for an unusual amount of time (generally 3 hours during the summer months) and cannot be reached by radio it is assumed they have encountered difficulty and a team is sent out to find them. The process is reversed for road traffic travelling the other direction. This procedure is vital in the winter months where the temperatures can drop to below and a driver experiencing engine trouble could otherwise be in a disabled vehicle without heat until another vehicle passes.
