Iceland’s two largest airlines — Icelandair and WOW Air — just can’t stop growing. They’ve been adding so many new flights to the US, using Iceland as a gateway between North America and mainland Europe.
Icelandair announced several new destinations in 2017, including Dallas and Cleveland. Just yesterday the airline announced their first new route of 2018, as they’ll begin 3x weekly seasonal flights between Iceland and Kansas City as of May 2018.
The airline has just announced another new route for this year. Icelandair will add 4x weekly flights between Iceland and Baltimore as of May 28, 2018.
Turn up the charm factor – our newest destination is Baltimore, Charm City! We’re looking forward to exploring hip and historic sights, getting fired up by local sporting passions, and sampling all that seafood. See more: https://t.co/2Hac2vWGfD pic.twitter.com/Rc26hyF6fe
— Icelandair (@Icelandair) January 10, 2018
The route will be operated with the following schedule:
FI643 Keflavik to Baltimore departing 5:05PM arriving 7:25PM [Mon, Tue, Fri, Sun]
FI642 Baltimore to Keflavik departing 8:35PM arriving 6:20AM (+1 day)[Mon, Tue, Fri, Sun]
The flight will cover a distance of 2,763 miles, and is blocked at 6hr20min westbound and 5hr45min eastbound. It will be operated by a Boeing 757-200, featuring 183 seats, including business class (which is more like domestic first class on a US airline), premium economy, and economy.
Icelandair’s 757 business class
This flight isn’t just useful if you’re trying to visit Iceland, but rather Icelandair is known for how they use Keflavik Airport as a connecting point between North America and mainland Europe. With them you can fly from over a dozen cities in North America to over a dozen cities in Europe. Best of all, Icelandair allows a free stopover in Iceland on a roundtrip ticket, which is a great way to explore one of the most breathtaking countries without having to pay extra in airfare.
This flight is now bookable on Icelandair’s website, and fares start at ~$299 roundtrip in economy, which is cheap. In many cases fares are only marginally more expensive to other destinations in Europe.Icelandair is significantly more full service than WOW Air, as they don’t charge for carry-ons, etc., so this can represent a very good deal.
It’s interesting to see Icelandair choose Baltimore as their next destination. When WOW Air first started flying to the US in 2015, Baltimore was one of the first two cities they flew to, along with Boston. Icelandair has been around forever, though they’re only now adding flights to Baltimore. The airline already flies to Washington Dulles, so clearly they aren’t just viewing this as a low cost alternative to DC, but rather they really see a market there.
In terms of earning and redeeming miles on this flight, Icelandair’s most useful US airline partner is Alaska Airlines. You can earn Alaska Mileage Plan miles on Icelandair, as follows:
And here are the redemption rates, should you want to redeem miles (though given how cheap paid tickets are, I can’t imagine doing that):
Anyone plan to take Icelandair’s new flight to Baltimore?
Why would they do this? Other than Chicago and detroilet, is there a more disgusting city in the US than Baltimore?
I flew Icelandair economy just recently. Was seriously impressed! For a semi-low cost airline, service was better than anything you'd get on any of the American Airlines for half the price. The layover at Reykjavik was really easy and only added about 1.5 hours to total flying time.
For decades flyers from the Washington area used Icelandair (Icelandic) from BWI to get cheap tickets to Europe. It wasn't that long ago they switched to IAD.
Not only odd that both Icelandair and WOW will fly from BWI but that Icelandair will keep both BWI and IAD airports (though British also flies from both.
The Icelanders are serious ! (Tho I find WOW's fares are way cheaper).
BWI was one of their first US destinations!
@CabinChief, wouldn't the nonstop Southwest flight be more convenient than connecting in Iceland?
@Derek @CabinChief it would be great if it were allowed, but it won't be. Same reason why you cannot fly on a single ticket from JFK to SEA via YVR.
Finally, a convenient way to fly MCI-BWI.
With so many new cities, like DFW, CLE, MCI, BWI, cabotage should be allowed so that one can fly through KEF. For example, SEA-KEF-BWI or PDX-KEF-MCI.
Jim I flew BWI-KEF and back twice when they offered that route. Then they moved it to IAD. Now it looks like they'll be serving both airports. I believe the only 2 other foreign airlines that serve both are BA and Air Canada.
Did Icelandair get a kickback from the MD government for this route? I know the BWI-LHR route operates with a revenue guarantee from Maryland.
Lucky: the map you’ve shown has MCI (Kansas City) in it from the previous Icelandair post. It does not have the BWI location.
@ Daniel @ Hutch -- Thanks, fixed! Sorry about that. Was dealing with slow plane wifi and it didn't upload correctly, it looks like.
Hmmmm, has Baltimore shifted to the mid-west?
Great to have Icelandair back at BWI. They served the route up through most of 2007. They even once had a $61 mistake fare that was honored for BWI-KEF (2004)..
Where is IcelandAir finding all the spare plane capacity to add all these routes suddenly? It's not like they're crushing it on plane efficiency either, with the current on-ground times for the US-Iceland routes