#55 out of 94 Airlines A minimum of 10 flight-reports within the past two years is required to appear in the rankings.
74 reviews
Life has returned to almost completely normal in Iceland. With over 90% percent of the adult population fully vaccinated all restaurants, bars and other places are full again. So are flights from and to Iceland. But what about service on-board Icelandair flights?
I booked this flight to Paris in economy class and I went for the upgrade bid a couple of days before departure. I offered ISK 21,000 (€ 140), almost the lowest possible amount for the bid but it was accepted even though there were only two available seats in business class. Very few people tried to get an upgrade.
I tried to check in on-line and got a warning message that only reduced service would be available on-board. OK, we'll see.
Despite having only hand luggage and trying to check in online I had to go to the check in desk. While there were dedicated business class check-in desks it took quite some time due to a tour group in front of me where all passengers had three pieces of checked in luggage.
Fast track security is available for business class passengers.
Let's go to the lounge.
Icelandair's Saga Lounge.
Breakfast spread was available. Think of a breakfast you would get in a mid-range hotel in Iceland. Nothing fancy but the choice was reasonably good.
There's a good choice of drinks, available all day.
I like the old Icelandair photos.
The lounge is large with plenty of seating.
A beautiful view over some large birds.
Only Icelandair has departures between 7:00 and 8:00. Play's flights leave earlier (between 6:00 and 7:00) and all other flights leave later.
Our aircraft was TF-ISV, a Boeing 757-200 first registered in 1999 and named Grábrók (a volcano in Iceland).
Icelandair's business class has a 2+2 configuration. It is similar to US Domestic First Class. It is considerably better than what most European airlines offer for their intra-European services but less good than what the same airlines offer for their intercontinental flights.
Reasonably good quality headsets were distributed.
Push-back was on time. The view during taxi.
We took off from runway 19.
Expected flight time to Paris was 3 hours.
A printed menu was distributed.
The choice of drinks was very good for an intra-European flight.
There was no printed food menu or choice of food. Breakfast was however quite good compared to what many other airlines offer nowadays in business class in Europe. It consisted of a roast beef salad with bread, good quality yoghurt and chocolate mousse. And yes, I had champagne for breakfast.
The mousse was very good.
Icelandair has built-in screens at each seat. A total of 44 movies are available, most of them in English with Icelandic subtitles (or in Icelandic with English subtitles). It seems like that no new movies have been added since covid started. I watched the movie J. Edgar.
A total of 147 TV shows are also available.
The Icelandair videos are interesting but I already saw them about five years ago.
It was cloudy over England.
The clouds ended near the south coast of England…
…and the French side of the Channel was sunny.
Flying near Rouen.
Do you know which town and airport is this?
The Seine as we were approaching Paris.
We landed at 12:45.
It was nice to fly in Icelandair business class again. I was a bit worried that service would be reduced using covid as an excuse but service both in the lounge and onboard was very similar to what it was before covid. Icelandair keeps offering a good business class service for an intra-European flight.
Les contributeurs de Flight-Report ont posté 20 avis concernant 3 compagnies sur la ligne Reykjavík (KEF) → Paris (CDG).
La compagnie qui obtient la meilleure moyenne est Icelandair avec 7.3/10.
La durée moyenne des vols est de 3 heures et 29 minutes.
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5 Comments
Nice to hear! Hopefully will go next year. Been too long--haven't been since 2018.
Nice, and a decent deal for a 3h flight
Reasonably well-adapted to the 3-6.5h missions they mostly do. Would be nice to have a little most space for longer flights, but those are rare.
Does not look much reduced from pre-pandemic times, very nice
I would do!
Icelandair definitely offer the best intra-European Business class experience, save on the few rare widebodies on some trunk routes. Always nice to see an Icelandair report.
Thanks for sharing!
The flight is way too early for my liking (but not much choice from KEF) but it's great to see that the product on the ground and in the air is similar to pre pandemic, only the hot meal is missing.
Great to see that the extensive Gin menu is still there.
No judgement for the champagne, it's perfectly fine for breakfast!
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