Icelandair Flight Review – Edinburgh to Reykjavik on the Boeing 737 MAX 8
Flying to Iceland with Icelandair for the first time from Edinburgh to Reykjavik felt like the perfect opportunity to combine two goals: try out Icelandair’s new direct service from Scotland and finally stay overnight at the Retreat Hotel at the Blue Lagoon. On my last visit, I had flown with British Airways via London Heathrow and enjoyed incredible day experiences at both the Sky Lagoon near Reykjavik and the Blue Lagoon itself. As unforgettable as those visits were, I knew I wanted to return and experience the full Blue Lagoon Retreat Hotel stay as a guest — and the launch of Icelandair’s Edinburgh route made it the ideal moment to go back.
Index
Booking & Check-In Process
Airport & Lounge Experience
Boarding Experience
Cabin Ambiance & Seating
In-Flight Service & Dining
Entertainment & Connectivity
Comfort & Amenities
Arrival & Post-Flight Experience
Overall Experience & Final Verdict
Fast Facts about Icelandair
| Detail | Outbound FI435 EDI → KEF |
Return FI434 KEF → EDI |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled Time | 2 hr 35 min | 2 hr 10 min |
| Actual Flying Time | 1 hr 52 min | 1 hr 59 min |
| Aircraft | Boeing 737 MAX 8 (6 years old) | Boeing 737 MAX 8 (7 years old) |
| Aircraft Registration | TF-ICL | TF-ICF |
| Skytrax Ranking | 4 Star | |
| Website | www.icelandair.com | |
| @icelandair | ||
Flying Icelandair’s new direct route from Scotland to Iceland
1. Booking & Check-In Process:
Booking was easy on the Icelandair website, although the first time having searched in Google for the site, I hadn’t realised I had obviously selected a site mimicking Icelandair. It probably seemed legitimate as it did show the correct seats that were available etc. but just when I was finalising the booking, I was asked so often about extras that it felt like a con. I then realised that this was not the official site, so terminated the booking and restarted on the right site.
Checking in was easy, although I couldn’t get my passport (for verification) to scan automatically, so had to just upload a photo to then be able to go on and check in. This did work ok, albeit it seemed a bit awkward to try and the boarding pass into Apple Passbook.
On the return flight, again it was simple to check in, but getting the Passbook boarding pass didn’t seem the most intuitive.
2. Airport & Lounge Experience:
At Edinburgh, although familiar, it was a very different experience to our usual flying with British Airways. Despite the business class ticket with Icelandair, they didn’t provide either fast track security nor access to a lounge. I have since found out, when noticing that they show lounge access on the Icelandair website, this is only available if you have a fully flexible business class ticket.
On the return, this was entirely different with access to both albeit only lounge access was noted on the boarding pass. At the foot of the escalators to departures, there was a board showing which airlines had access to the fast track queue. This did help get me through security quicker as it was quiet, but I’d expected the technology to have been updated to the latest to allow for larger liquids and not having to remove laptops and toiletries, but apparently not.
The Saga Lounge was great, albeit located before passport control, so do bear this in mind if you’re travelling on an international flight. I’d been to the lounge before, when flying with BA, but it’s very decent - good amount of space and seating, a good selection of foods and snacks (I was there early morning, so a breakfast focus), with also a good choice of soft and alcoholic drinks - the gin selection was particularly good, but not for 8am in the morning! Lounge access is allowed in Iceland for business class tickets, regardless of whether Saga Premium or Saga Premium Flex.
There was the main island with all food and drinks together, but located through the lounge were other coffee stations too. The lounge wasn’t revolutionary, but overall a really, really good experience - well maintained and a lot of seating choices, well organised and nice clean toilets and showers too. A nice touch was the Blue Lagoon handwash in the WC’s. Signage too of departing flights was throughout the lounge - positive all round.
3. Boarding Experience:
Such a disappointing experience at Edinburgh. Shortly after the flight landed from Reykjavik, boarding gate 15 was announced. There was no signage indicating which queue was priority for Saga class, and everyone just randomly started queuing up. There were so many staff, presumably because this was their inaugural flight from Edinburgh, but they all just seemed to be chatting and not doing anything to organise the queues.
Boarding was late but did eventually start, albeit very stop/ start through the boarding tunnel. Eventually we were allowed to board, and there was a very friendly and welcoming cabin crew member at the door.
Being seated in 1C, an absolute pet peeve of mine is when passengers not even seated there fill the overhead lockers there with baggage, rather than putting this adjacent to their seating. Despite being about the fifth person to board, there was no adjacent space and I really dislike my baggage having to be stored much further back when it can be really awkward to try and retrieve it on landing, when everyone seems to get up so quickly.
It was extremely disappointing that the (surly) crew member did nothing to help, until I asked if they couldn’t move a whole pile of blankets elsewhere. Eventually, and he initially was just going to do nothing to help, he created enough space to at least get my case stored, and I had to put my bag and jacket elsewhere.
The return was quite a bit different, but again there was no signage at the gate once the gate number was announced, so it was guesswork as to which was the priority (Saga) queue and what was the main queue. Staff seemed to be late there, and did then put up signs for each queue, albeit by that time it looked as if all the passengers were already there.
4. Cabin Ambiance & Seating:
The aircraft was reasonably new (Flightradar24 said 6 years) and comfortable with a 2-2 configuration in Saga/Business class, with the front four rows being Saga, with the remainder Economy in a 3-3 configuration.
The seats were a really decent size and comfortable, probably feeling newer than the aircraft age. The toilet also seemed a lot newer than 6 years.
On the return flight, it was a different aircraft (slightly older at 7 years old this time) albeit still really decent and seats and toilet felt newer than this. The only thing that was a problem again was that so much of the front row overhead bins were filled with both safety equipment but also lots of things like blankets and pillows that presumably could have been stored elsewhere. I was actually on board first this time and got my case stored ok, albeit it wouldn’t fit in the first bin. The crew were far more proactive in helping passengers here, much more dynamic than the outbound crew who were just happy looking on at passengers struggling and doing nothing about it.
5. In-Flight Service & Dining:
Before taking off, decent quality headphones were handed out to Saga passengers that wanted them, and there were decent sized screens in front albeit they were wrongly labelled with the seat numbers.
Soon after take off we were offered a drink, with an excellent Saga Premium Drinks Menu. Despite there being the best gin selection I’ve ever seen onboard any airline, I opted for just the tonic water only, as I would be driving from the airport to the Blue Lagoon.
The drinks menu had a good selection of white, red and sparkling wines, as well as cocktails, beers, liqueurs & spirits, and non-alcoholic selections. In terms of gin, there were six options with a choice of two Franklin & Sons tonics - Premium Indian or Premium Light.
Himbrimi Old Tom Gin
Pure Icelandic Crafted Gin
Lundey Gin (colour changing)
Stuðlaberg Pink Gin
64 Reykjavik Angelica Gin
Tanqueray
Even if you do get the choice of Tanqueray or Aviation Gin with British Airways, I’ll never look on them in the same way ever again, having a choice like this with Icelandair.
Addendum on the lack of anything special for the inaugural flight - every passenger got a small donut! How generous, not!
I had selected in advance a special meal - going for the Asian Vegetarian option, often more interesting than the Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian options.
Other passengers were served the full meal on a tray as individual items, mine came boxed but on a tray too. Food was really good, just the mushroom pate a complete non-starter for me with my hatred of anything mushroom. The menu was:
Wild mushroom pâté
Vegetable biryani arancini with smoked eggplant bechamél and red bell-pepper coulis
Rosemary focaccia
Lemon mousse
Food was really decent quality, and it was a nice touch having both the full-size drinks menu and then a smaller menu for the food - even for a vegetarian!
On the return, the drinks and food menu was exactly the same, but on the flight (no driving) I was able to try out a couple of the gins - first choice was the Stuðlaberg Pink Gin (a great choice) then followed by the Himbrimi Old Tom Gin - it did say in the description that this would be a taste you’d never tried before, and indeed it was!
The food was good, albeit I had to avoid the mushroom pâté again, and when I opened up the box I saw that the lemon mousse dessert container was completely smashed, so it was full of broken plastic and would have been a danger to eat. I did ask if there was an alternative, but told there weren’t any.
6. Entertainment & Connectivity:
There was a decent sized screen albeit they didn’t work properly to show the safety demonstration. Despite trying to reboot them twice, they eventually gave up and did a manual safety demonstration instead.WiFi was on board, and included free connectivity for Saga Premium passengers or Saga Gold club members.
It was easy to connect to the Icelandair Internet Access, and there were instructions on screen with a QR code to get access. Once I’d established that again my NordVPN was blocking the page, and disconnecting this, it was easy to select the free WiFi page and enter my surname and booking reference to get full flight free WiFi.
The WiFi remained decent throughout - an average speed of almost 3Mbps.
Similarly on the return, WiFi was available soon after take-off, and easy to connect to (free). The speed was good for most of the flight, but there was about a half-hour period when it was down. This time too, I took the headphones (economy passengers had to pay for headphones to access the entertainment system) and watched a film. There was a decent choice of films and entertainment, so I picked Paddington in Peru, which was a perfect light choice and perfectly timed for the duration of the flight.
7. Comfort & Amenities:
There was no washbag or anything like this being such a short flight, actual flying time less than two hours.
Similarly on the return, there was no need for a blanket or extra pillow, nor a washbag for a flight again that was under two hours.
8. Arrival & Post-Flight Experience:
The last time I had time to Iceland, I had organised a VIP arrival service. As it was such a well organised airport, other than it being a pleasant interaction being met at the gate and escorted through the airport, then being driven by the same representative to my hotel, I really didn’t feel like there was a need for this. I was only travelling with my hand luggage too, so the arrival into Reykjavik's Keflavík Airport was really easy.
In no time, I’d collected my Avis hire car and was on the way to the Blue Lagoon and the Retreat Hotel.
On the return, although the flight landed on time, it was a bit confusing from the arrival bridge that we were prevented from accessing the departure level of the airport, and had to go back downstairs seeming like we were about the board, then got chunneled through an outside lane to get to the international arrivals area. Queueing was ridiculous, as although I was first off the Icelandair flight, there had obviously been a few flights landing just before us. This took quite a while to navigate through all the queueing lanes, and when getting to the end it was apparent why. The man controlling the queue at the end, either directing people to the automated passport control gates, or to the desks, was not paying attention and there were so many gates that were showing green yet he was not directing anyone to them.
9. Overall Experience & Final Verdict:
The outward flight was disappointing with there being (almost) nothing special for the inaugural route, and it’s a massive negative for me when it’s awkward trying to store luggage near my seat, and the crew just watch without any offer of help or assistance.
That said, the aircraft was really comfortable, service (from the friendly female) crew member really good, as was the standard of food, drinks and WiFi.
The return was better, with having both fast track security and the lounge at Keflavik Airport, and there wasn’t the same fuss with trying to store baggage on board - the crew seemed much more efficient.
I love trying new airlines, and although Iceland was not a new destination for me, I would definitely use Icelandair for getting there again, or flying with them to onward destinations in either the US or Canada. It’s a great airport, and as good it would be to have a stopover, it would also be a good airport just to connect through. There were different announcements for those with connecting flights and those to the US, so I’m assuming it was because you can perhaps do US immigration there too as you can in Ireland. This would be one to verify though.
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Icelandair has launched a new direct service from Edinburgh to Reykjavik, making it easier than ever to reach Iceland. Here’s my review of the flight, from timings and aircraft details to my first-hand experience onboard the Boeing 737 MAX 8.