Iceland Air - how is it?

[Claire4dpins]

Hello All,
I am finally realising that the time has come where we have to book our flights for our December trip to Orlando. I have been looking for ages but some how no truely wonderful deals have appeared LOL!!
I Wish we could have booked back in January when there where cheap prices with BA but just didn't have the money then!

I am finding Iceland Air are at least £150 cheaper than the next best I can find (with Delta or US Airways) so the 'saving' with be enough to pay for the car hire. Virgin & BA are just too much!

So how bad is Iceland Air? I did a search and found only two comments - both negative but without any real details. We are just two adults - so we don't have entertaining kids to worry about!
I am trying to look at it as the flights are only a few hours - it is the weeks at Disney that really matter!!

Any thoughts on Iceland Air or where to find very cheap flights welcomed!
Thanks,
Claire

 

[eyoreaud]

Hi Claire

Don't know if you've booked your flights yet but i'd give Icelandair a miss, we used them a couple of years ago and if you don't mind rude staff (who never smile) and have no manners! then the saving may be worth it but it would have to be almost free for me to fly with them again That said DH said he would fly with them if the price was right (i guess he'll be going alone then )

Hope this helps

Luv Audrey,
xxxxxxxxxxx

 

[gharrer]

The attendants tend to be reserved. The food is awful. The planes are kind of old looking ( the seats) But I would fly again with them for a good price. It's just a plane ride to me, as long as they are safe, and as I recall they have a very good record of safety. Nancy

 

[LATICS]

Got a good price off them but sorry to say bottled out after visiting their website!!! Shopped around and changed villas arrival date and got x 4 flights for £1440 with MYTRAVEL..

PJ


26 Days to go....!

 

[Obi Wan Kenobi]

Hello All,
I am finally realising that the time has come where we have to book our flights for our December trip to Orlando. I have been looking for ages but some how no truely wonderful deals have appeared LOL!!
I Wish we could have booked back in January when there where cheap prices with BA but just didn't have the money then!


Any thoughts on Iceland Air or where to find very cheap flights welcomed!
Thanks,
Claire

Claire,
I know its a bit "Grandmother to suck eggs", but we always book flights with Virgin Atlantic as soon as they are available.
In that way we get Upper Class for £1,400 each, and BA are very close to that price at the same time.
Its difficult if you do not have the finances at that time, but the only way is to start working on next years flights for December in December the year (or two before)

 

[Gibbo]

Blimey £1400.00 each!!!!

 

[Obi Wan Kenobi]

Blimey £1400.00 each!!!!

That's cheap! UC or CW costs normally 2-3K each
Only way to fly

 

[LATICS]

Sorry should have been more explicit. My flights for four of us was £1400, which leaves me plenty to spend on a 5 star villa games room,not overlooked,pool etc...But its all about choice and due to circumstances this is only the second time we are going to Florida and our kids(teens!!) now like having thier own oasis and space which DIY allows...

PJ

25 Days to go...!!!

 

[Tartan Tigger]

We flew with Icelanadair in December 04 and have booked to fly with them again in December 05. The cabin crew were polite and curteous (didnt walk around with the stupid fixed grin), the food was alright, we had no delays and on the return journey we got a free upgrade.
As we flew from Glasgow we got a free trip to the Blue Lagoon during our 4 hour stopover in Iceland
For the money you can save I would fly with them.

 

[tink too]

We've never flown to Florida with Icelandair, but have flown with them to Iceland! It was several years ago, but we found the flight attendants to be very pleasant and the flight was good. We flew from Glasgow, so the flight to Keflavik was quite short and I believe the folks travelling on to the US said it was only another 4 or 5 hours flying time.

The other bonus is that you can have a stop-over in Rekyavik!

 

[Vizeman]

Just found out today that our BMI aircraft out of Manchester will now be operated by Icelandair but will be serviced by BMI staff. Apparently this is only on the Washington leg of our trip. Let's hope they're not too bad eh!
Anybody else had this done to them, if so what were they like?

 

[cbird]

Just found out today that our BMI aircraft out of Manchester will now be operated by Icelandair but will be serviced by BMI staff. Apparently this is only on the Washington leg of our trip. Let's hope they're not too bad eh!
Anybody else had this done to them, if so what were they like?

We are also going to be affected by this. From what I can see the big difference is going to be no seat back tv's and the seating configuration of 3 and 3. This is not so convenient for 4 people travelling together.
It really annoys me that airlines have the right to sell you a product and then replace it by something different and we the customer do not have the right to cancel and re book something else. I appreciate that sometimes for operational reasons a change may be necessary, but if the product is not identical we should have the opportunity to cancel and re book elsewhere.
This same thing happened to us a few years ago with Virgin. Same thing informed a few weeks before travel and the airline they used was Iceland Air too. Really old plane no tv's or games nothing, no apology no right to cancel. I think Iceland Air has improved alot since then. I hope.

 

[Thea]

We used Iceland air for our trip late december 2004. The service in the air was ok, but the information on the ground were lacking. We might fly iceland air again (if the price was very low) but never in december. They had a late arrival time at mco 8:30 pm (- cheaper airport fees).

We ran into a blizzard on iceland and and the plane got delayed. When we landed I spoke to a woman who ran the gift shop. She told me that I would have plenty of time to look around because our plane would be delayed. I tried to get this confirmed at customer service, but they had no information about delayes. This repeated itself over the next 2 hours - no information at all, even after the sceduled departure time had come and gone. Was finally told that boarding would start, and the plane left 3 hours late.

Then we had to make an unsceduled refueling stop on the way to Orlando, due to strong headwind, this I was told by the flight attendant 2 hours into the flight. She also told me that the ground crew in Iceland had been informed about this. We had asked the ground crew about when we should expect to arrive (needed to inform family in Orlando) and they had not told us anything about an extra stopower.

In the end we arrived at MCO at 2:30 AM and at CSR at 4 am in the morning. Totally exausted and not very happy. I know you can't do anything about the weather, but 3 hours without any information, total chaos when boardíng, they didn't serve any food or drink during the first 2 hours of the flight (and since we didn't get anything during the extra 3 hour wait people were starving). The flight attendants were almost invisible on this flight, and they ran out of blankets and pillows within 30 minutes of departure.

The trip back was uneventful, except they had a lot of trouble with the amount of carry on luggage people brought back. It seemed like all the top storage compartments were completely full after they had boarded only half the passengers, so the other half were told to put their luggage under the seat in front of them, making the long flight a very uncomfortable one, even if we only brought a very small carry on bag.

Thea

 

[Claire4dpins]

Thank-you very much to everyone for all the feedback on Iceland Air. We still haven't actually booked the flights though we have promised ourselves we will do it this weekend!!

Most of the negative stuff posted sounds like stuff we could cope with - if we take a good book and the MP3 player for the plane and make sure we have some snacks if the food turns out to be that bad!

But what Thea said about that very long delay gives me more concerns! I guess I had not really thought what the weather could be like in Iceland in December!! I realise they can't help the weather and this kind of situation could arise with any airline wherever you flew- but that lack of information sounds like bad customer service.

Well I will check the prices and times again today and will let you all know what we decide to do.
Thanks again for taking the time to post all this helpful information, we appreciate it.
Claire