[from an email received today]

Service From Seattle:

"We at Icelandair are excited to announce new year-round scheduled service between Seattle, Washington, and Reykjavik, Iceland, with the first flight arriving from Keflavik International Airport on July 22, 2009.

Icelandair will offer four flights a week departing Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) at 4:30 p.m., arriving in Reykjavik at 6:45 a.m. the following morning. Flights on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays will connect with Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm and London, offering up to 4 hours faster connection times from Seattle to Scandinavia than possible through other European hubs. Flights to Helsinki, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Paris will also be available via Reykjavik. Connecting flights returning from Reykjavik arrive in Seattle at 5:45 p.m., just in time for dinner at home or easy connections throughout North America."

Seattle Flight Schedule :

FI680 departs SEA at 4:30pm / arrives in Reykjavik (KEF) at 6:45am the following morning.

FI681 departs KEF at 5:00pm / arrives SEA at 5:45pm the same day.

____

http://www.icelandair.com/

Pretty much coincides with SAS' withdrawal from SEA. I suspect there will be a lot of takers; some decent connections possible to Europe, and - importantly for the leisure set - Icelandair (FI) prices itself like Aer Lingus - very cheap excursion and one-way fares. They also have a "premium economy" fare with a bigger seat than crunch coach.

And I'm sure no one will complain that these are 7-hour flights on narrowbody 757 because it's an European airline.

Hope the route is successful. Icelandair had similar service from San Francisco but they withdrew it after only 17 months (May 2005 - Oct 2006). From what I read it was a success (in terms of booking) but they decided to drop it in favor of adding Halifax and increasing flights from New York.

They do usually have good fares/deals and KEF is a convenient connection point from the west coast if you can't get a non-stop to your destination (gets most of flight-time out of the way and saves time connecting on to the UK, Scandinavia and Northern Europe).

And no, I'm so used to 757s that I actually don't mind them. They're not <i>that</i> bad, even for 7 hours. In fact there are some advantages.

I am surprised that they can do it with a 757. Didn't they have a 767 for the San Francisco Flight? Did they get rid of the plane?

I wish Icelandair would add more flights to their Orlando/Sanford airport. These flights are always expensive; I guess the people from Iceland need a place to warm up.

They have a couple of 767s leased to other airlines and for charter work. Maybe they will put this on SEA or maybe not.

The 757 definitely have the range to do SEA-KEF. There are longer routes on 757s over the Atlantic on NW, CO, etc.

Didn't realize it at first reading, but note that the 757 will sit at SEA for about 23 hours each day. There's no alternative as the flights have to connect at KEF to those bound for UK and continental Europe.

But that means very poor utilization for the aircraft. I guess traffic is just down everywhere that there's no better use of the aircraft.

That is what happens in Florida. The pilots and flight attendants get off the plane, spend the night and fly back the next day.

Probably saves money overall due to crew rest regs - they're not dead-heading the return crew nor having to domicile a crew in SEA for 2 or 3 days.