Face to Face: Hjalti Jonssen, Icelandair
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Icelandair has been through a growth period when it comes to the UK. Can you summarise what has happened in the UK market?
Earlier this year we added a fifth weekly flights from Glasgow to Reykjavik and in October we will add a sixth weekly flight from London Gatwick to the city. We would like to have a daily service from Gatwick but we will see how this extra frequency works first.
Also from February 2015 we will add twice weekly flights from Birmingham. Tourism to Iceland has increased a lot and the market and opportunity is in Birmingham to generate more traffic. There are no other route plans so far but we are always looking for opportunities.
We’ve had a really good start to 2014, tourism to Iceland was up 50% in the first two months of this year and we are seeing the benefits of this, particularly those looking to see the Northern Lights.
The airline also has several routes that go into the USA and Canada. Have there been any changes to these recently?
Icelandair now has more than 10 gateways into the USA and Canada, including Anchorage, Boston, Denver, Edmonton, Halifax, Minneapolis, New York (JFK, Newark and City Area), Orlando, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver and Washington DC.
Edmonton and Vancouver are our new additions for this year and we will also be flying to Toronto and Washington DC year-round for the first time.
Many British tourists connect to US destinations through Reykjavik, I would estimate it is around half. There has been a good boost in traffic on the US and Canada routes this year.
What is new in terms of aircraft developments?
WiFi has been installed on one of our aircraft and we are testing the capability on our flights. This will be rolled out on all our aircraft once the trial has been completed and successful.
We are also installing LED mood lighting in our aircraft and we hope to roll that out this winter. The lighting will be used to reflect different colours like green or red during the flight to help people relax. We can do fun things with it too like creating the Northern Lights within the cabin.
There is also some new aircraft on order, but we do not know what routes these will operate on yet. We have eight Boeing 737 MAX8 and four Boeing 737MAX9 on order which will start to enter service in the first half of 2018.
You’ve also gained attention from your new safety video…
All the features we put into our aircraft have the Icelandic touch. It’s important to us that we show off our country, culture, lifestyle and design. The inflight safety video is a bit different and emphasises the Icelandic landscapes and design element too; it has been really popular.
Icelandair suffered from industrial action earlier this year. Has this now been resolved?
There are negotiations still on-going with the mechanics union, which started in mid-June after they cancelled industrial action.
Terms have been decided with the pilots. There are no strikes planned by any union linked to Icelandair workers.
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