Icelandair is known for its creative business model of one-stop connectivity between North America and Europe via Iceland, thanks to the advantageous geography of its home base. The airline has just announced a new destination, which is kind of outside the carrier’s typical expansion strategy.
In this post:
Icelandair adds Keflavik to Istanbul route
As of September 5, 2025, Icelandair will be launching a new 4x weekly flight between Keflavik (KEF) and Istanbul (IST). The flight will operate with the following schedule:
FI900 Keflavik to Istanbul departing 3:25PM arriving 11:55PM
FI901 Istanbul to Keflavik departing 7:05AM arriving 10:00AM
The 2,562-mile flight will be operated by a Boeing 737 MAX 8, featuring 160 seats, including 16 business class seats and 144 economy class seats. The eastbound flight is blocked at 5hr30min, and will operate on Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, while the westbound flight is blocked at 5hr55min, and will operate on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. 
As you can see, the aircraft and crew utilization there isn’t ideal, but that’s also because Icelandair heavily times its flights around connectivity. Crews will have long layovers, ranging anywhere from 31 hours to 55 hours.
Up until now, Helsinki was Icelandair’s easternmost destination, but now Istanbul will take that title.
This explains the Icelandair & Turkish Airlines partnership
In the summer of 2023, Icelandair and Turkish Airlines announced a partnership, which confused me. That’s because at the time, Icelandair didn’t fly to Istanbul, and Turkish Airlines didn’t fly to Keflavik, so it seemed like there were very limited situations where that would actually be useful to consumers.
I figured that sooner or later, we’d either see Turkish Airlines fly to Keflavik, Icelandair fly to Istanbul, or both. So I guess you can say that the other shoe has dropped now.
What makes this route so interesting is that it’s one of Icelandair’s few routes that’s not about connecting people to or from North America. Instead, the focus of this route is clearly on getting people between Iceland and Asia (including the Middle East). The schedule of the flight is even timed so that it matches Turkish Airlines’ biggest bank of flights.
Turkish Airlines flies to more countries than any other airline in the world, so this opens up all kinds of new one-stop routings to Iceland. If anything, I’m just a bit surprised that it’s Icelandair adding the route, and not Turkish Airlines. Turkish Airlines is growing at a fast pace, and already flies to more countries than any other airline, so you’d think this would be an easy “pin” for the airline to add to its map.
Here’s how Icelandair CEO Bogi Nils Bogason describes this new route:
“I look forward to adding the great destination of Istanbul to our extensive route network and to further expand the partnership with Turkish Airlines, opening convenient connections between Iceland and the east. In recent years, we have seen increased interest in travel between Asia and Iceland and with these new connections, we are further strengthening our sales and distribution network. We are excited to continue reinforcing our route network as well as connecting to exciting markets for our customers and tourism in Iceland.”
Bottom line
For once, Icelandair isn’t expanding in North America or Western Europe, but is instead heading further east. As of September 2025, the airline will launch year-round flights between Keflavik and Istanbul. Thanks to a partnership with Turkish Airlines, this will enable plenty of one-stop connectivity to Iceland from destinations across Asia and the Middle East.
It’s cool to see Icelandair trying something new, and not thinking exclusively about transatlantic service.
What do you make of Icelandair adding Istanbul flights?
I don’t really understand the timing… are they trying to cater to TK metal flights? The majority of eastward traffic into KEF land in the early morning and the westbound traffic from KEF takes off around late afternoon-early evening…
Yes, the entire point of this is to get KEF O/D traffic to/from TK stations
This makes a lot of sense.
Destination popularity is cyclical and fickle. 16 years ago, virtually no one went to Iceland. Today it's almost cliche as a cross-Atlantic destination.
At some point, a decrease in arrivals from the west will need to be offset by an increase in arrivals from the east.
Guess Icelandair might join SA soon and then Lufthansa will add Icelandair to their takeover wishlist?
That'd be great, cut-price business class from Europe to Canada/US and a bunch of *A miles thrown in.
This is more for locals, given TK already flies to multiple destinations in North America. I doubt many would want two stops in KEF and IST unless the fare was very attractive and considering the differences in product. FI is buy in board on economy.
I agree. Unless you like in Halifax, NS this connecting flight does nothing for you.
By locals you mean anyone in Asia or Africa who wants to travel to Iceland? NA isn’t everyone’s destination.
Local Icelanders who want to fly East - it's right there in the quote!
The population of Iceland is under 400,000 with under 3000 Asians, 6000 Polish and Ukrainian, and around 5000 from other countries. The vast majority of people travelling via KEF are between Europe to North America. The population isn’t large enough to support that much traffic elsewhere.
That doesn't change the fact it's a rich country which is also developing as a tourist destination. I don't see why it couldn't sustain a route to one of the biggest cities in the world which also happens to be a hub that can easily get passengers to pretty much anywhere in the Balkans, Asia, or Africa.