Flights to Iceland

For centuries, Iceland's remote location made life very hard for the people who settled here, and it kept the country off most travelers' maps until fairly recently. Flying changed that. Today Keflavík is a busy transatlantic crossroads, and getting here is much easier than it was when I first wrote this page. It still isn't cheap, though, and the airline picture has changed a lot.

The short version

Icelandair is still the airline most people fly, from North America and from Europe. A long list of foreign airlines now fly in too, many of them only in summer or winter. What Iceland no longer has is a home-grown budget airline: Iceland Express and WOW air are long gone, and PLAY ceased operations on 29 September 2025, stranding thousands of passengers abroad.

Where you'll land

Almost every international flight lands at Keflavík International Airport (KEF), on the Reykjanes peninsula about 50 km from central Reykjavik. Flights around Iceland leave from the small Reykjavik Airport in the city, not from Keflavík, so if you're connecting to Akureyri or Ísafjörður you'll need to get yourself across town. My guide to getting between Keflavík and Reykjavik covers the bus, Flybus and taxi options, and the airports page has more on both.

Flights from the US and Canada

People are still surprised by how short the flight is. Keflavík Airport lists Boston at about 5 hours 40 minutes, New York JFK at about 5 hours 45 and Toronto at about 5 hours 25. That's not much longer than New York to California. Even the West Coast is manageable: Seattle is about 7 hours 30.

Icelandair

Icelandair has grown well beyond the handful of cities it flew to in 2010. According to Keflavík Airport's destination listings, it flies year-round to Boston, New York (JFK and Newark), Washington DC, Baltimore, Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, Toronto, Orlando, Raleigh-Durham and Nashville. Halifax and Pittsburgh are summer routes, and Miami is a winter one. Schedules change every season, so check before you plan around a particular city.

The best deal Icelandair offers hasn't changed: if you're flying across the Atlantic with them, you can add a stopover in Iceland at no additional airfare, from one night up to a week. If you're heading to Europe anyway, it's the cheapest way to see Iceland. I wrote up how to plan a stopover separately.

Other North American airlines

These are the ones Keflavík Airport lists right now. Most are seasonal.

• Delta: New York JFK, Minneapolis and Detroit, all summer only.
• United: Chicago year-round, plus Newark and Washington DC in summer.
• Alaska Airlines: Seattle in summer.
• Air Canada: Toronto and Montreal in summer. Air Transat also flies Montreal in summer.
• WestJet: Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg in summer.

American Airlines is coming back too. It has announced daily summer flights from Philadelphia starting 27 May 2027.

If you don't live near one of these cities, you'll connect somewhere first. From most of the US, that's still easy.

Flights from Europe

When I wrote the first version of this page, only two airlines flew to Iceland year-round. That's no longer true. Icelandair still covers the most European cities, but now there's real competition on the big routes:

• London: Icelandair and British Airways fly from Heathrow all year. easyJet flies from Luton all year and Gatwick in winter.
• Elsewhere in the UK: Manchester has Icelandair and easyJet all year, with Jet2 and TUI adding winter flights. easyJet and Icelandair both fly Edinburgh.
• Dublin: Icelandair, all year.
• Scandinavia and Germany: SAS and Icelandair fly Copenhagen; Lufthansa and Icelandair fly Frankfurt.
• Amsterdam and Paris: Transavia and Icelandair fly Amsterdam; easyJet adds Paris CDG in summer alongside Icelandair.

Most of these flights take about three hours. The full list, with a filter by airline and season, is on the Keflavík Airport destinations page. If you're coming from Britain or Ireland, see getting to Iceland from the UK and from Ireland. You can also come by sea: the ferries page covers that.

Flights from everywhere else

From Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, Africa or Australia, plan on connecting in Europe or North America. The one nearby exception is Greenland: Keflavík lists Nuuk with two airlines, and if you want to go the other way, here's how to visit Greenland from Iceland.

Keeping the cost down

Iceland is still an expensive place to fly to, and there's no longer a local budget carrier pushing fares down. A few things help:

• Fly in the off-season. Icelandair's own advice is that January to April is usually the cheapest time. It's also dark and cold, so read up on Iceland in winter first.
• Watch what's included. Icelandair shows its Economy Light fares by default and lets you add bags during booking, so compare the price with the bags you'll actually bring.
• Check the foreign airlines. On routes like London or Manchester, easyJet or Jet2 can undercut Icelandair, especially in winter.
• Use the stopover. If Iceland is one stop on a bigger trip, the free Icelandair stopover is hard to beat.

Once you've booked, the budget guide will tell you what the rest of the trip is likely to cost.

FAQ

Is there a budget airline based in Iceland?

Not anymore. PLAY stopped flying in September 2025, WOW air collapsed in 2019, and Iceland Express disappeared before that. The cheapest seats now tend to be on foreign carriers like easyJet, mostly from the UK and continental Europe.

Can I fly straight from Keflavík to Akureyri?

Generally no. Domestic flights leave from Reykjavik Airport in the city, so you'll need to get from Keflavík to Reykjavik first. Icelandair's Akureyri page says the domestic flight takes about 45 minutes. See getting from Reykjavik to Akureyri.

Do eruptions on the Reykjanes peninsula affect flights?

The eruptions near Grindavík since 2023 have been the type that sends out lava rather than big ash clouds, and the government says they haven't affected flights to and from Iceland. Nine eruptions hit the Sundhnúkur crater row between December 2023 and August 2025, and the area is still active: on 15 September 2026 the Icelandic Met Office reported that land at Svartsengi is still rising and that the most likely outcome is another magma intrusion into the Sundhnúkur crater row. Check safetravel.is before you go, and see our volcano page.

Photo by ombrelle