Birmingham is set to become Icelandair’s fifth gateway in the UK from February 5 next year, as the carrier launches a twice-weekly service between the airport and Reykjavik.
2015 will mark the 70th anniversary of the airline’s UK flights, and wlll see Icelandair move its Heathrow operations to the new Terminal 2 in March.
The Icelandair network has expanded rapidly in recent years, with capacity increasing at an average of 15% per year, said senior vice president of marketing and sales, Helgi Mar Bjorgvinsson.
By next summer, the airline will fly to 25 European destinations and 14 cities in North America, after the launch of flights to Portland, Oregon in May.
“Half our network is transit traffic,” Mr Bjorgvinsson said. “Our key competitive advantage is that Iceland is in between the UK and North America, and we have a lot of capacity for a small domestic market. We have 100 weekly departures from Reykjavik to the US – more than Helsinki, Stockholm and Oslo combined.”
Icelandair hopes to continue its close relationships with the UK travel trade, with joined activities and trade missions next year, including its latest activity to promote stopovers.
The carrier is also updating its fleet, with 16 Boeing 737 MAXs on order, the first to arrive in 2018. Onboard Wi-Fi, currently available on half the network, will be on offer fleet-wide by the end of next year.