Icelandair, Iceland flag carrier, carried 366,000 passengers in May, compared to 316,000 in May last year, an increase of 16%. Capacity in May was 11% higher than last year.

The number of passengers on international flights in May was around 340,000, compared to 291,000 in May 2012, an increase of 18%. The load factor on international flights was almost 81%, an increase on the previous year.

Passengers on domestic flights totaled 23,000, compared to 26,000 in the same month last year. The load factor on domestic flights was 76.6% and punctuality was 85%, a significant improvement from the previous year.

New route to the Faroe Islands

Partly as a result of these encouraging results, the Icelandic airline has decided to expand its network and from next year, from May to October 2024, will operate between five and six weekly flights to the Faroe Islands, an autonomous region of the Kingdom of Denmark, halfway between Iceland and Scotland.

Flights will be operated between Keflavík Airport, 50 km from the capital Reykjavík, and Vágar Airport, the only airport in the Faroe Islands.

A few days ago, Icelandair inaugurated the start of its service to Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, at Reykjavík Airport. The new seasonal service will operate four times a week on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays until October 2023.

New partnerships

In addition to the new route to the Faroe Islands, the Faroese airline Atlantic Airways and Icelandair signed a Memorandum of Understanding. Icelandair announced the expansion of its network with this new destination and confirmed that flights will operate in the mornings from Keflavík Airport to ensure convenient connections to the Icelandic airline’s other destinations in Europe and North America.

Commenting on the new route, Bogi Nils Bogason, CEO of Icelandair, said that the islands are a popular destination for its passengers and noted the strong interest in the destination from its customers around the world.

“The bond between the people of the Faroe Islands and Iceland has always been strong, and we hope that with increased flight frequencies, the connection and cooperation will grow even stronger. It is in this spirit that we will now begin to expand our successful, long-standing cooperation with Atlantic Airways.

In fact, this is the second agreement the Icelandic national airline has signed within a week. At the annual meeting of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) in Istanbul, Icelandair and Turkish Airlines signed a codeshare agreement that will offer passengers connections through their respective hubs. Passengers traveling from Turkey to Keflavik will now be able to use Icelandair’s hub to continue their journey to North America. Similarly, Icelandair passengers to the Turkish capital will be able to continue their journey with Turkish Airlines to the Middle East and Asia.

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Vincenzo Claudio Piscopo

Vincenzo graduated in 2019 in Mechanical Engineering with an aeronautical curriculum, focusing his thesis on Human Factors in aircraft maintenance. In 2022 he pursued his master's degree in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Palermo, Italy. He combines his journalistic activities with his work as a Reliability Engineer at Zetalab.

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