Icelandair Seattle, Brussels flights launched

Icelandair, the flag-carrier of Iceland, has announced plans to launch new international flights. The airline said in a statement that it will add a fifth flight, in 2010, to its new four-day-a-week service between Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, and Seattle in Washington, the United States.

Icelandair’s announcement of the non-stop flight between Reykjavik and Seattle came after Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) said on July 31, 2009, that it was stopping its service between Seattle and Copenhagen in Denmark. (SAS has been operating non-flights on the Seattle-Copenhagen route for 42 years.)

Icelandair’s flights leave Seattle-Tacoma International Airport at 4.30 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, and reach Reykjavik Airport at 6.45 a.m. the next day.

In Reykjavik, passengers can get connections to 18 destinations in Europe – including London, Paris, Stockholm, Oslo, and Copenhagen.

In the return direction, the flight will depart from Reykjavik Airport on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Mondays, and land at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport at 5.45 p.m.

The flight time between Reykjavik and Seattle is about seven hours.

The new Reykjavik-Seattle flights use a refurbished Boeing 757-200ER plane that can carry 183 passengers.

Fares on Icelandair’s website www.icelandair.com start at about $675, including taxes, for the Seattle-Reykjavik roundtrip travel in August 2009 and September 2009.

The statement said that Seattle will be Icelandair’s only gateway on the West Coast.

At present, Icelandair flies year-round from New York and Boston, and operates seasonal services from Minneapolis and Orlando.

The new flights between Reykjavik and Seattle, according to Icelandair, will serve mainly those passengers connecting to destinations in Europe other than Reykjavik. However, the airline will allow free stopovers in Iceland.

Icelandair also announced that it will raise the number of services from Glasgow and Manchester in the United Kingdom to Iceland and also increase the airline’s destinations connecting North America from September 25, 2009.

Accordingly, Icelandair will add two flights a week to its current autumn/winter schedule from both Manchester and Glasgow. The enhanced services will operate four flights a week – on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.

The flight will take off from Reykjavik Airport at 08:00 hours and land in Manchester at 11. 35 hours. It will leave Manchester at 12.25 hours, and reach Glasgow at 13:30.

On the return leg, the flight will leave Glasgow at 14.20 hours, and land at Reykjavik at 15.40 hours. These times, according to the airline, provide short and convenient connections to and from Icelandair’s destinations in the US and Canada.

Icelandair said the extra flights to Glasgow and Manchester will operate as a “triangle route” with the following routing: Reykjavik-Manchester-Glasgow-Reykjavik.

This schedule, Icelandair added, fits into the airline’s “hub and spoke” system that lets passengers connect onwards to Icelandair’s destinations in North America.

More details on the flights and packages to Manchester and Glasgow can be had from the website icelandair.co.uk

In another development, Icelandair said it will launch flights between Reykjavik and Brussels, the capital of Belgium, in June 2010.

The Reykjavik-Brussels service will operate twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays.

At present, Icelandair flies to 25 destinations – 18 of them in Europe and 7 in North America, through its hub in Iceland.