Iceland is one destination where cheap flights can be easy or impossible
Many travelers are flocking to Iceland these days, partly because the country’s famously high-flying currency is now worth only about half of what it was a few years ago, so it’s not insanely expensive to stay there for a week or so anymore. In the past the country used to be a common short stopover of maybe a day or two between North America and Europe, but now it’s more of a destination in its own right.
The thing about finding cheap tickets to Reykjavik is that everything depends on which city you are starting from. Nearly all the air traffic into and out of the island is on two airlines, both based in Iceland itself.
Iceland Air and Iceland Express
Iceland Air is the big national carrier that has been flying for decades, and Iceland Express only popped up a few years ago as a low-cost carrier. In both cases they only serve a handful of cities in North America, and a wider selection in Europe, but still if you aren’t going to cities they fly to your quote will be insanely high.
For example, if you fly from New York to Reykjavik soon you can get a roundtrip fare for $510, but if you fly from Miami to Rekjavik you’ll be quoted over $3,000. The same is true on the Europe side. Oslo to Rekjavik is currently $310 roundtrip, while Shannon (Ireland’s second largest airport) is over $3,000, even though the distance is about the same.
Strategies for second-tier cities
Even though it’s now quite a major hub for trans-Atlantic flights, Reykjavik is still considered a second-tier city, and it’s important to figure out your options before you get too far along.
In many cases you’ll be able to book an extra leg of your journey on a partner airline, adding the fares together into a reasonable ticket. For example, if you start in St. Louis, which doesn’t have direct flights to Iceland, you can usually fly on a domestic carrier for, say, $200 extra to New York, and then the rest of the way on one of the Iceland carriers. But other times that option won’t come up and you’ll be quoted a full-price ticket on the first airline and a full-price ticket on the second, for a total you’d never consider paying.
So even if you aren’t going to Iceland this strategy is worth considering. First you’ll of course just check your preferred city pairs in a flight-search engine, and if the fares seem low then your work is done for you. But if you get a fare quote that seems double or triple what you were expecting, then it’s time to look into breaking things into segments yourself.
Southwest Airlines is another example of one that doesn’t show up on search sites, so for the above example you could book a domestic flight from Miami to New York, giving yourself a few hours in between to be safe, and then the cheap ticket from New York to Reykjavik.