Icelandair is doing very well nowadays. The airline hired pilots from its competitor Play and started to offer a cadet program. Load factor was 86% according to the last data and Revenue Passenger KM increased by 29% compared to the previous year. Prices are high; the average price for a one-way flight from Keflavík to Dublin with a flight time of just over two hours is 275€ in economy and 515€ in business class.
Icelandair offers an upgrade bid system. I had bid but it was not accepted this time - the email about this arrived only 90 minutes before my flight. Business class was not fully booked.
I arrived to the airport shortly before sunrise, exactly one hour and 45 minutes before my flight.
All flights departing between 07.25 and 07.45 are Icelandair flights.
I only had hand luggage and I had checked in on-line so I didn't have to go to the check-in desks or to the luggage drop-off which saved me a lot of time.
The new Bakað shop is a good place to buy pastries landside.
Despite the morning rush hours, the long lines and a warning of labour shortage all channels were open and I was through security in 17 minutes.
The terminal was full as it is norm in the morning hours.
All departing flights in the morning.
Iceland is not EU but Schengen and Ireland is EU but not Schengen so I had to pass immigration. There were no queues and I was through in no time. All non-Schengen flights leave from gates D.
There's a large souvenir shop and a food outlet in the non-Schengen area.
The gate area is usually crowded with many flights departing at the same time.
Boarding started on time at 07.00 from Gate D22b.
Most passengers seemed to be connecting from the US. Only a handful of people had an Irish or an Icelandic passport.
Boarding was by bus which was not very comfortable but we had fantastic views after we arrived:
Our aircraft was TF-ICY built for Icelandair five years ago.
Icelandair has 14 B737-MAX 8 aircrafts. Configuration is 2+2 in business class and 3+3 in economy class.
The cabin is modern and is in perfect condition. Icelandair has possibly the nicest economy cabin on a narrowbody plane for intra-European flights.
I booked an emergency row seat for an extra fee of ISK 4000 (EUR 27). Here are two of the three seats:
Legroom is huge.
The flight was almost completely full.
An expected flight time of 2 hours and 5 minutes was announced.
Push-back was at 07.40 for a scheduled departure time of 07.30.
There's a good quality screen at every seat.
Flight information before departure:
We took off from runway 19 at 07.57.
A total of 70 movies, 259 videos and 411 songs are available in the In-flight entertainment.
The movie selection includes five Icelandic movies.
Free water, tea and coffee are offered but otherwise there's a good buy-on-board menu. I didn’t eat anything this time as I was between breakfast and lunch.
An overview from the back of the cabin.
I spent time watching a movie. This is Icelandair’s second shortest flight at 1501 kms (the shortest one is to Glasgow at 1351 kms).
We landed in Dublin at 11.04 and were at the gate at 11.14 for a scheduled arrival time of 11.05.
Deplaning in Dublin was by stairs. The weather was not as nice as in Iceland.
Our neighbour.
A surprising sign.
Thank you for reading my flight report.
Lovely report!
It's great to see Icelandair doing well nowadays, I've always found them to be a very charming airline.
I personally flew on this exact same aircraft (TF-ICY) last December KEF-LGW, and found it to be a really solid experience as well.
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That new livery is growing on me, but I still find that the old livery is timeless and beautiful and it will be sad when it is all gone. Wow, that morning departures board is busy with 3 full screens!
FI definitely have the nicest narrowbody cabins on intra-European routes. The seats look really sleek and comfortable, and it's great to have IFE and power sources. However, the buy-on-board made more sense when Icelandair had consistently lower prices--as you mentioned, lately the prices are quite high so you expect more of a full service. Certainly the cabins are not LCC cabins at all, but the service is so it makes for a confusing value proposition. Luckily for FI there is still a ton of demand to/from Iceland itself, so they've become less and less reliant on connecting traffic, and make more money as a result--though of course transfer pax are still a large piece of their business, as evident in your review.
Thanks for sharing!
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