Icelandair make a fair bit of change being a discount European connection airline. Right now international travel is still depressed, so they're not coming back full steam yet.

The major North American destinations that are within reach of a 737 MAX, an A321neo or their aging 757s will likely be coming back.

I don't expect FI to return as their model is to tap into underserved markets and or hubs and extract. Once extracted move on.

Fairly confident they'll return to YEG. It might take some time though. Besides, what is Edmonton if not underserved !

I'm curious where have you seen that says their model is "to tap into under served markets"? Looking at their route map, Billund and Bergen are the only noticeable cities that may be under served. Every other airport has major business and leisure traffic with stiff competition. Maybe throw in Berlin and Hamburg based on how LH treats those citiese but the rest?

You would think FI would go after YEG, YWG and YOW before any other airport in Canada if their true model was to serve under served markets.

FI was always well received in Halifax so I hope they're back. YHZ was their only Canadian route when they started flying here 25 years ago and Reykjavik is within easy reach on a MAX.

But I can't say YHZ is underserved in summer with LGW, CDG. DUB & GLA on WS and starting next summer both Condor and Lufthansa/Eurowings to FRA. LHR will probably be year round again on AC on a MAX when it restarts.

I don't know. FI has been in and out of YHZ a few times now. When the Max was grounded, I believe CLE and YHZ were the first FI destinations to be dropped. That tells me those markets weren't performing to FI's standards.

Also, what LO 044 is saying is right. They're not really going after the secondary North American or European markets, but moreso the main ones. Or else they wouldn't have launched YUL, but rather YOW or YWG. You see a similar trend in the US, where the smallest market they serve now is Portland, a metro area of 2.5 million. So who knows, could be the likes of YEG or YHZ don't return. Certainly not in the near term.

I agree with you both thenoflyzone and LO 044. Sometimes I wonder if airlines actually know that YOW exists….Ottawa-Gatineau is over 1,400,000 people and sooo underserved

The key to make Airline✈️routes profitable is with Connecting Passengers. Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver & Calgary have enough of that & why they have the most of Flights/Frequencies for Domestic, US and International destinations in Canada!

Ottawa, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Halifax & other Smaller cities do Not!

It is not fair, 2.5 million , 17,300km². With an area that large, Greater Montréal would stretch as far as Trois-Rivières, Victoriaville, Cowansville.

Interesting video from 1944 of Air Canada Flight 6 from Vancouver to Montreal. Then then show the connecting Lancaster air cargo flight to Scotland with onwards Air Mail connections to London, Moscow and Lisbon.

• Video Link

I understand that Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary are hubs for Air Canada and Westjet. But what does FI care about flying to a hub? It doesn’t have airline partners in Canada, neither do many other international airlines.

FI has interline agreements with Air Canada and WestJet. Most international airlines will have interline agreements with one or both.

Yes pretty much every airline has an interline agreement with any airline even if they are competitors but most people are not using FI to fly to Reykjavik. They are using FI and KEF to connect to European destinations. So why fly YWG-YYZ-KEF-CDG when you can fly YWG-YYZ-CDG. The YYZ-KEF flight lands in KEF at 6:20am local time and 2:20am Toronto time! At least if you're coming from YEG, YYC or YVR the local time at home is/was around midnight which can be doable for a connection. Is the pricing from FI that competitive?

I see some great seat sales from YYZ to Europe but then it costs me more to get to YYZ (from YEG) then the YYZ-Europe flight. My point with this is that FI is going into an area with heavy competition. Even YUL seems to have options to many relatively obscure destinations in Europe and beyond from foreign carriers.

Their pricing is quite competitive. I've often seen it as one of the cheapest options. However, they lack certain frills that are standard on other airlines (food, most notably).

Their secret sauce is the ability to use narrowbody aircraft - the 737 MAX and the 757 - instead of widebody because most of North America is within reach of Iceland on those planes.

A narrowbody aircraft doesn't need to have 250-300 passengers in it to make money. They can use airplanes with 160 - 220 passengers that have lower operating costs.

The connection blows, yes. I'm not a huge fan because I prefer non-stop flights, or if I have to connect, connecting somewhere with more alternate flights so I'm not reliant on the one-a-day onward flight. That's worth some money to me, but I'm getting softer in my old age.

I could see them returning to YEG, and I might see them trying YWG or YOW with seasonal service. That's a fair ways down the road of recovery though.

Icelandair pushes the free stopovers in Iceland. Flying to larger cities who also happen to be hubs gets more traffic that may stopover on their way to/from Europe.

Perhaps not. When FI launched Halifax 25 years ago the European cities served were reached by a connection in KEF. Now a lot of those cities will be reached nonstop from YHZ on AC, WS, DE and next summer LH/EW.

That stopover in Iceland was a nice perk when it was easy to book on my first FI trip years ago but now much harder to get with all the traffic going through KEF!

Both FI and TAP Air Portugal make it easy to add the free stop over at the hub. I would think a big part of that is to maintain good relationships with the local national government and the local tourism industry. It does add some extra costs to the operation.

FI competes on price. Price is very dynamics. If you need to go over in the next week the cost of a flight could be anywhere from reasonable to uber expense depending on how full the flights are on any particular day.

Many people are not going to London, Paris and Amsterdam. In many cases you have to make an onward connection in Europe. For example if your flying from Saskatoon to Berlin number of connections is the same flying AC, WS or FI.

It's not the cost in Iceland but the availability now for hotels, car rentals etc. 25 years ago when FI started flying from YHZ to KEF it was easy to get a hotel for a couple of days on the way to or from Europe along with a car for touring. Not so easy anymore with everyone wanting to do it (covid aside)

I don't think this has been ever pointed out but AC for the past 2 (or more?) months have been flying mainline 320s on YVR-YXT 3x/week. Did YXT ever have mainline (PW?) jets 35 years ago? Certainly the first ever AC mainline to Terrace-Kitimat.

YOW breaks the 200k pax mark in August for the first time since March 2020:

Sector / Aug-20 / Aug-21 / % Change
Dom: 57,210 / 207,745 +263.1%
TB: 0 / 0 / #DIV/0!
Int'l: 0 / 0 / #DIV/0!
TTL: 57,210 / 207,745 / +263.1%

Sector / YTD 2020 / YTD 2021 / % Change
Dom: 873,012 / 486,179 / -44.3%
TB: 163,093 / 0 / -100.0%
Int'l: 168,382 / 0 / -100.0%
TTL: 1,204,487 / 486,179 / -59.6%

12 Months Rolling / % Change vs Year End 2019
Dom: 645,204 / -83.8%
TB: 0 / -100.0%
Int'l: 0 / -100.0%
TTL: 645,204 / -87.4%


Month-Over-Month Change
Sector / Jul-21 / Aug-21 / % Change
Dom: 116,171 / 207,745 / +78.8%
TB: 0 / 0 / #DIV/0!
Int'l: 0 / 0 / #DIV/0!
TTL: 116,171 / 207,745 / +78.8%
Avg/Day: 3,747 / 6,701 / +78.8%