Icelandair has just announced its newest destination in the United States, which seems like a logical enough addition…
In this post:
Icelandair adds Keflavik to Pittsburgh flight
Between the middle of May and the end of October 2024, Icelandair will launch a new 4x weekly seasonal flight between Keflavik (KEF) and Pittsburgh (PIT). The new route will operate with the following schedule:
FI831 Keflavik to Pittsburg departing 4:55PM arriving 7:20PM
FI830 Pittsburg to Keflavik departing 8:30PM arriving 6:25AM (+1 day)
The 2,794-mile flight is blocked at 6hr25min westbound 5hr55min eastbound.
Icelandair intends to use a Boeing 737 MAX 8 for the route, featuring 160 seats. This includes 16 business class seats and 144 economy class seats. Note that business class on Icelandair is more like domestic first class within the United States, rather than like long haul business class, where you’d ordinarily find a flat bed.
This route isn’t just useful if you’re trying to travel between Pennsylvania and Iceland, but rather Icelandair is known for how it uses Keflavik Airport as a connecting point between North America and Europe. The airline offers seamless connections to more than 25 destinations across Europe, so this is a great way to get from Pittsburgh to many destinations with just one stop. Given the huge demand for transatlantic travel in summer, filling seats isn’t hard.
How Icelandair’s new service fits into the market
Icelandair’s flight to Pittsburgh will represent the airport’s second transatlantic service, as it complements British Airways’ route to London Heathrow. While this is a new route for Icelandair, now defunct Icelandic ultra low cost carrier WOW Air used to operate this route briefly, prior to liquidating.
Icelandair has slowly but surely grown its route network in recent years, thanks largely to taking delivery of fuel efficient and fairly long range Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, which have great economics. Icelandair expects to take delivery of three Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft in 2024, which will bring the company’s fleet to 41 aircraft, half of which will be 737 MAXs.
While the airline has limited service to the West Coast of the US, the carrier has quite the network to the East Coast of the US, ranging from Baltimore, to Orlando, to Raleigh, and beyond. Eventually longer routes should be possible again, as the airline has ordered some Airbus A321XLRs. However, those are only expected to be delivered starting in 2029.
Bottom line
For the summer 2024 season, Icelandair will be adding a new seasonal 4x weekly flight between Keflavik and Pittsburgh using Boeing 737 MAXs. This will only be the airport’s second transatlantic route, and it’ll be the first time that Icelandair operates this service, though WOW Air operated a similar flight in the past.
What do you make of Icelandair adding Pittsburgh flights?
Pittsburgh has such a wonderful airport design for managing flights. Too bad it no longer serves as a regional hub. I'm glad they are getting a little more service.
PIT was design as a pre 9/11 hub, and I have to say quite a well design and ahead of it's time too. Operationally should be better than CLT or PHL.
Can you please give Pittsburgh its "h" where you report the flight times?
I wonder why they chose this city to fly in the US. Perhaps some insight to this may have been interesting. From a connectivity standpoint it does not seem like a good choice but then again they do not really have many partners and do not belong to a major alliance.
It’s not about connectivity in Pittsburgh. It’s about people from Pittsburgh going to Europe- connecting over Iceland to get to over 20 cities in Europe.
It's the amount of subsidy PIT was handing out.
It's possible every non Canada international flights are subsidized. Maybe expect the PIT-CDG which I don't think DL ever resume that route.
They even paid a crazy amount to fly PIT-PVG for a very few flights.
Once Iceland Air gets the LRs in 2025, they should be able to easily operate flights using the LRs to the Caribbean and other warm weather destinations in North America for Europeans looking to get some sun. Perhaps, on the EU side of that equation they can target secondary European cities that don't have much direct service to North America much in the same way they are now targeting PIT which only has one airline flying to Europe.
Pittsburgh?
WOW, how is this suppose to work.
It’s a region with approximately 2M people that generates several hundred passengers a day to European points in the summer. That’s how
It's a pun on how WOW couldn't make it work.
That's how.
Odd choice of destination - the market for people going to KEF from PIT is next to nothing. Raleigh or Phoenix or another second-tier city may have been a wiser choice.
They already fly to Raleigh. Also, ass discussed in the article, this flight also connects to several European destinations. It’s not just Iceland.
What are you talking about, dink? RDU is a seasonal flight until October? It's November now, no?
You ask why they didn’t choose Raleigh. They now fly to Raleigh seasonally and have announced that Raleigh is going year round next. Why do you call me dink? You must be a troll
Obviously what I implied is that FI should immediately launch year-round service to RDU as opposed to launching a new route from PIT.
I referred to you as 'dink', because your statement made no sense.
My statement made plenty of sense and you’re a mean-spirited troll
Can't even be bothered communicating to you any further. Dink.
Random, but since this is about PIT figured I'd drop it here. I flew into PIT yesterday and noticed a Flybe plane on the ground! Couldn't find more about it in the few minutes I had while taxiing, but thought it was interesting!
Flybe, their Dash 8 in PIT?
I'd guess WestJet, Jazz or Porter could be picking up those.
Hope it can coexist with BA, who cut PIT down to 3x/Wk, and is already its weakest (by loads) route to the USA, despite no longer being the newest.
You would never guess by our news stories, which tout the BA frequency and overall service as amazing and such a big factor for our economy, ha ..
Not sure it should be much of an issue. PIT-LHR is only 3x/wk for December-February and returns to 6x/wk from April-October. The route is doing much better than when it launched in 2019. PIT to Europe has growing demand in summer as evidenced by the seasonal capacity increase on PIT-YYZ + PIT-YUL which mainly serve as Europe feeders.
If anything I feel LHR would last over KEF as Icelandic tourism was already decreasing pre-pandemic...
Not sure it should be much of an issue. PIT-LHR is only 3x/wk for December-February and returns to 6x/wk from April-October. The route is doing much better than when it launched in 2019. PIT to Europe has growing demand in summer as evidenced by the seasonal capacity increase on PIT-YYZ + PIT-YUL which mainly serve as Europe feeders.
If anything I feel LHR would last over KEF as Icelandic tourism was already decreasing pre-pandemic meaning likely less O&D traffic than when WOW flow the route.
Pittsburgh is in Pennsylvania? So there's two cities in one state? How is that even possible?
What do you mean ?
I think it's a reference to a scene from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zytRIDBAUV0
“This will only be the airport’s second transatlantic route, and it’ll be the first time that WOW Air operates this service, though WOW Air operated a similar flight in the past.”
I think you made a typo, unless you have a time machine?
Great for Pittsburgh, just wish they could support service without endless subsidies that don't really end up providing a net value to the area.
I always wonder how much $$ was spewed to make this happen. Living 15 mins from Pitt, I may need to help support the financial incentive, haha!