This summer I was travelling with my family to Iceland and Venice for a few weeks. Iceland is somewhere I always wanted to go to, and I am very exited to finally be seeing that country. My Mom really wanted to go to the architecture biennale in Venice and I found a really cheap flight VCE-JFK via IST on TK for $377 per person. After Venice I will be joining my family on my Dad's side for a week long beach holiday at Bethany Beach, Delaware. After that I will be returning to SFO (or OAK, actually) on WN from BWI. To clear out any confusing IATA codes HFN is Höfn, a town in southern Iceland, and FEI is a small Icelandic domestic carrier called Eagle Air (it doesn't have an ICAO code). RKV is Reykjavik's smaller domestic airport. Here is a map of my routing from gcmap.com (excluding my one domestic flight from RVK-HFN):
KEF-DUS AB3929 Y HERE DUS-VCE AB8762 Y Coming Soon
VCE-IST TK1870 Y Coming Soon IST-JFK TK003 Y Coming Soon
BWI-OAK WN565 Y
My routing from gcmap.com:
My domestic flight:
This is my third leg where I will travel from KEF to VCE on AB. These flights were very expensive, but I couldn't find anything cheaper so I reluctently booked this flight connecting in DUS. Unfortunately I don't have so many pictures of this flight so please pardon the lack of detail.
FLIGHT REPORT
We arrived at KEF airport two hours ahead of our flight at around 10:00 pm to return our rental car. The airport was quite busy that night. For some reason, German airlines (EuroWings, Lufthansa, Airberlin) have alot of departures between 00:00 and 1:00! Does anybody know why? Thanks in advance!
FI advertising their route network
The line for check in was very long considereing that AB was checking in three flights at the same time (DUS, MUC, TXL) !
They really should get more counters. Check in took a whopping 45 mins. The worst I've seen sice my South Africa trip in december
FI, who has ample facilities at KEF only has one flight at this hour (to Gothenburg, Sweden). So they are waaaaay under capacity:
The FIDS
Please note that the FIDS also includes the later morning flights (including WWs may departures at 06:00 - 08:00)
FI planes waiting out the night at KEF:
Look at that beautiful Icelandic sky!!!!! Yeah, It is really that light at midnight in Iceland!!!!!!
See what I mean about how many flights on german airlines there are!!!
Airberlin arriving (I can't remember if this was my plane or not)
Luftansa A321 operating flight LH 2469 to MUC:
The lone FI 757 bound for Gothenburg:
A few last pics of KEF:
Boarding Area:
My Plane:
Time to board!
Boarding was through a beautiful, modern, glass jet-bridge:
AB is proud of its alleigence to EY and OneWorld:
Boarding and cabin shots:
Legroom is sufficient:
Seatback Pocket contents:
After a beautiful takeoff from KEF to the west (We landed from the west when flying from BOS, that's weird. Any insights?) we take a sharp turn (almost 180 degrees) to the east.
The crew understand that people want to sleep on this flight so they do a very efficient beverage service.
I ask for an orange juice. It is served with warm bread which is a nice touch.
We preordered meals online. However, the FAs do not deliver them. After they finish the beverage service, I ask a FA about our meals and she asks us what we ordered! I suppose that we didn't need to pay $12 each for a meal then lol. However, the FA totally trusts my honesty and promptly delivers out meals.
Zürich-style chicken with rösti and carrots:
I found the whole meal to be waay to salty, but I eat the whole meal. My grandmother who was seated next to me however gave her meal back to the very kind FA who gave us outr meals. The FA seemed very dissappointed that my grandmother didn't like her meal. The FA clearly is proud of her company and is interested in making the customours experience as comforable as possible. All the FAs on AB 3929 were wonderful!
I am otherwise pleased with the meal. For the same price as FI, I got a mutch bigger portion (the portion on FI was sooo small), even though the meal wasn't very good (the meal on FI was very good despite being expensive).
After my meal, I settled down and slept (unusual for me on a plane) and woke up about 40 mins from DUS.
Our arrival was on time and there was a great view on approach to DUS.
Upon deplaning at DUS, we were given a heat shaped chocolate from the FAs. I forgot to pphotograph it. However, I found this pic of the chocolate on google photos:
I didn't eat the chocolate because it was a little to sweet for my taste. I don't really like milk chocolate.
DUS turned out to be a hard to navigate airport with almost no signage and gates on multiple levels. It was so hard to find whwere I was going!
CONCLUSION
These flights were waay too expensive. AB doesn't price their flights that well. However, I think that AB is overall a good airline in terms of their product.
The catering is okay. They probably need to work on the quality of their BoB meals, but the hot bread rolls are a nice touch.
The crew are amazing. They are efficient and always smiling!
The hard product is fine. However, I am not very tall so I'm not the best judge of legroom.
There are no PTVs. So, an IFE program that can be acsessed on mobile devices or programming on the dropdown screens would be nice. the seatback reading material kept me occupied for mabey 20 or 30 mins.
KEF was fine, exept for it being 1 hour from the city and the long check in lines.
DUS is hard to navigate and poorly signed but otherwise decent.
Overall, a good experience with AB
See more
Verdict
Air Berlin
7.4/10
Cabin8.0
Cabin crew10.0
Entertainment/wifi3.0
Meal/catering8.5
Reykjavík - KEF
6.0/10
Efficiency2.5
Access2.5
Services9.5
Cleanliness9.5
Düsseldorf - DUS
7.3/10
Efficiency8.0
Access5.0
Services7.5
Cleanliness8.5
Conclusion
These flights were waay too expensive. AB doesn't price their flights that well. However, I think that AB is overall a good airline in terms of their product.
The catering is okay. They probably need to work on the quality of their BoB meals, but the hot bread rolls are a nice touch.
The crew are amazing. They are efficient and always smiling!
The hard product is fine. However, I am not very tall so I'm not the best judge of legroom.
There are no PTVs. So, an IFE program that can be acsessed on mobile devices or programming on the dropdown screens would be nice. the seatback reading material kept me occupied for mabey 20 or 30 mins.
KEF was fine, exept for it being 1 hour from the city and the long check in lines.
DUS is hard to navigate and poorly signed but otherwise decent.
Overall, a good experience with AB
0 LIKESLIKE TO THANK THE AUTHORTHANKS ! FLIGHT-REPORT LIKED
Are the pics screenshots from a video? The quality is really bad. It's a shame because it's an exotic route for AB, but the pics are rough to look at :-/
Looking forward to the domestic Iceland flight. I love Iceland. Truly one of the most beautiful and unspoiled places in the world. Will hopefully be heading there for a weekend in the fall
For your Iceland trip I strongly reccomend going outside of the Reykjavik area. Flying FEI to Höfn is one idea, but it might be cheaper to fly Air Iceland to Isafjordur in the Westfjords. I've never been to the Westfjords but it seems to be a really beautiful area and flying into Isafjordur might be a cool AvGeek experience (look on youtube for landings at Isafjordur and you'll see what I mean). Renting a car in Höfn and driving back to Reykjavik over the course of a week is what we did. Email me if you need Iceland travel advice! Iceland is really an amazing (although expensive) country!
Thanks! I've been to Iceland over 50 times over the years and have family there so I'm good :-) I've done a few domestic flights within Iceland, mostly up to Akureyri and one time to Kulusuk Greenland--sadly this was all before Flight-Report.com existed. The approach to Ísafjörður looks awesome. If I had enough time I would love to do a drive on Route 1 from the East of Iceland (like Höfn) back to Reykjavík stopping to do Jökulsárlón, Vatnajökull, etc, unfortunately I can only spare a long weekend to go to Iceland this year. Think I'll to a daytrip to Snaefellsnes
Wow! 50 times in Iceland! Thats a lot! Roadtripping from Höfn to Snaefellnenes via Vatnajökull, Jökullsarlon, Vik, Hella, and Borgarnes on Route 1 is what we did. For your dayrtip to Snaefellness I would definitley reccomend stopping at the settlement centre in Borgarnes for lunch and the Egil's Saga exhibition if you haven't done that before. Also if it's a clear day, doing a trip up Snaefellsjökull might be a good idea (on clear days you can see both sides of the penninsula -- from Olafsvik to Arnarstap).
Flight-Report is a free website hosting more than 500 000 pictures and 17 000 reviews, without ads, this website can't exist. We understand that ads can be annoying, this is why we only display a maximum of 2 non-invasive ads per page.
To continue using Flight-Report, we invite you to add Flight-Report to your blocker's "white list".
77 reviews
12 Comments
I've done a few domestic flights within Iceland, mostly up to Akureyri and one time to Kulusuk Greenland--sadly this was all before Flight-Report.com existed. The approach to Ísafjörður looks awesome. If I had enough time I would love to do a drive on Route 1 from the East of Iceland (like Höfn) back to Reykjavík stopping to do Jökulsárlón, Vatnajökull, etc, unfortunately I can only spare a long weekend to go to Iceland this year. Think I'll to a daytrip to Snaefellsnes
Here you go: http://flight-report.com/en/report/17150/Eagle-Air-Iceland-FEI-742-Reykjavik-RKV-Hornafjordur-HFN%3Fv=68&edit=_edit_report
It's very interesting to see why the pics turned out like this on the website :(, but I'm still able to enjoy the FR.
Thanks for sharing your experience with AB on this interesting flight.
Have a good one, see you!
Login to post a comment.