Iceland Air?
 

I'm looking for reasonable airfare to Paris from the Northeast (probably JFK or Boston). Iceland Air has some attractive prices. I have found few comments about them and the ones I saw were very contradictory. Does anyone have recent experience with this airline? (We're not planning to stay over in Iceland-just Paris on this trip). Thanks.

We've flown them from Baltimore. They're pretty much like all the other airlines in cattle-car class. Sometimes the experience is OK and sometimes less so. As with other airlines, a lot depends on the particular group of flight attendents you get on your flight.

It's all over in a few hours anyway.

We flew Iceland air 4 years back so my input is probably dated. We flew out of Minneapolis and into Paris with a connection in Reykjavik. They were pretty ok. No complaints.

A while ago someone else posted the fact that they fly 757s which is essentially a one aisle aircraft rather than the standard two aisles on transatlantic routes. This was not a big factor for us. Seats and service were basic but not bad at all. Besides the distance to Reykjavik is pretty short. It took us around 6 hours from Minneapolis and it should be shorter from the west coast.

OK .. i meant it should be shorter from the east coast. Hopefully you will get some more recent inputs.

Well, our Iceland input isn't that recent. We flew in 2000, I think it was. But I can tell you - if someone came up to me tomorrow and handed me two Icelandic tickets to Europe free/no strings, I would say...No thanks!

We were horribly uncomfortable...
downright miserable in the cramped seating. Plus flying via Reykavik lengthens the flight time (plus layovers). Never ever ever again!

We've flown Icelandair and found it to be a decent experience. Iceland isn't really very far from the normal path of many transatlantic flights. Dividing the trip into legs is a different way to do it that some people might actually regard as an interesting "plus". We enjoyed the airport shops at Keflavik airport. Flying in the 757 is fine with me and the flight distances aren't really much different than flying some of the longer domestic flights within the U.S. We're not "big & tall" people so we didn't find it cramped or anything. (When you get right down to it, the amount of space that you have to work with as an individual passenger isn't any different, but the extra space inside a double aisle wide body aircraft creates an overall roomier feel to the cabin.)

I wouldn't have any problem flying Icelandair again and it can be an excellent value in comparison to other carriers at certain times.

Here's what I wrote in our trip report for our trip to Germany via Iceland from San Francisco. Keep in mind that the SF direct flight to Iceland was new in June, having begun in May with a very limited schedule (not even daily service).

"Author: DeeDee
Date: 07/03/2005, 03:38 am
The Good, Bad and Ugly about Iceland Air...

The Good –
-A great fare
-More food service than expected – we were served 2 meals on the 8+ hour flight to Reykjavik and 1 light meal on the 3 ½ hour flight to Frankfurt

The Bad –
-Need to be at the airport three hours before your flight
-They did not honor pre-arranged seat assignments. This was not a problem on the flights to Europe. On the return on both legs our seat assignments were changed. On the Reykjavik – SF flight we ended up sitting in 3 different areas – our teens were in row 44, husband in 30 and I was in 32
-They would not give us a boarding pass in Frankfurt for the KEF-SFO flight. They told us to get it at the gate in KEF. We stood for about 40 minutes along with a few others at the closed gate (delayed flight), until finally someone asked when we could get boarding passes and then were told to go to Customer Service. Iceland Air could really use some improvement in Customer Service!
-Problems on each flight segment with airplanes audio equipment. No audio at all on the first leg SFO-KEF (this involved at least the six seats around us, too). From KEF-FRA the headset passed out had the wrong # of prongs for the jack, but the audio worked. From FRA-KEF the audio played in only one ear. On the last leg from KEF-SFO, my seat had no electrical function-no audio, no reading light, etc. and I took another seat.
-Iceland Air has very restrictive carry on allowance – 6 km, 13+ lbs. We found that they weren’t very strict about this, though.
-Flight was late by almost 3 hours on the final leg back to SFO. They failed to explain the delay, just kept pushing back the departure time, first one hour late, then 1 ½ and so on. When we finally did board, we were further delayed by the failure of the audio-visual system to cover the safety/evacuation message.

The Ugly –
Iceland Air had missed a scheduled departure from SFO-KEF on June 11. Apparently, they failed to notify the passengers and the plane didn’t end up taking off for 36 hours. Some of those same passengers were coming back to SFO with us and they were not happy campers, very vocal. One fellow had booked a business class seat on that June 11th flight for a meeting in Frankfurt. He was extremely upset about that missed flight and then the delay with our return flight. And the reason for both schedule delays was maintenance problems. That made my daughter quite nervous about the flight back, but it was uneventful."

We are flying The end of March 06 from Boston to Paris. On the return we will stop for one night in Reykjavik. The fare was unbeatable. The flight experience sounds like the experiences that we have had on Aer Lingus out of Boston. The planes are different, but also cramped. The service was pretty indifferent both times we flew Aer Lingus. The entertainment also did not work well and we were held up on the tarmac in Dublin on the return for 5 hours awaiting maintenance on the plane. We were not allowed to deplane, but first class was. So although this post is about Iceland Air, I am comparing it ahead of time to experiences with Aer Lingus and feel that it's not a long flight and the price is right (as we did with Aer Lingus).

We flew Icelandic Air in August, and it was pretty grim. The seats are configured for tiny people, food service was minimal, the airplane was old and shabby looking. Don't know what it was, but it had just one aisle.

When we plan our trips, though, we prefer to economize on the travel and then be less thrifty on other aspects of the experience (like food, lodging, etc.) So I'd probably grin & bear it again.

The other thing we ran was the immigration folks Reykjavik. This will probably not be a factor for you. But hubby and I are Indian citizens and have Indian passports. We have our permanent residency (green cards) now but at time, we had a multiple entry work visa for the US and had a valid tourist (short stay) visa for France and UK (the countries we were visiting). They looked at our passports like it was something from another world. We were simply transiting - had a valid visa for our destination and valid visa for getting back into the US. But this lady had probably never seen an Indian passport before this. Trust me, she looked as if she had seen something from outer space. She had to go get her manager and we were at this counter for close to 20 mins. Further, this was pre 9/11. In the midst of all this, DH is losing it and telling me about how people who are not qualified to check a simple thing as this should not be employed in this position ... blah blah blah. He does tend to exaggerate :) I was smiling away in amusement :)