Icelandair is the main airline of Iceland, headquartered at Reykjavík Airport in Reykjavík. It is part of the Icelandair Group and, during the summer of 2015, operated scheduled services to 39 cities in 16 countries on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean out of its hub at Keflavík International Airport. The geographical position of Iceland allows one-stop transatlantic flights, which are one pillar of the airline's business strategy, along with traffic to and from the country.
Icelandair traces its roots back to 1937, when Flugfélag Akureyrar was founded in Akureyri on the north coast of Iceland. Flight operations started in 1938 with a single floatplane of the type Waco YKS-7. In 1939 the airline was grounded when this aircraft was destroyed in a capsizing accident. The company moved to Reykjavík, where it acquired another Waco aircraft and was re-launched in 1940 as Flugfélag Íslands, which translates as Flight Company of Iceland. Previously, two unrelated airlines of the same name had existed in the country (from 1919 to 1920, and between 1928 and 1931). For international purposes, the name Iceland Airways was adopted.
Like most Icelandic companies, Icelandair was hit quite hard by the 2008 financial crisis in the country, but was well on the road to recovery when another crisis of a very different kind hit in 2010. The air traffic restrictions following the 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull resulted in large parts of the European airspace being closed down. The air travel disruption coincided with the start of the important summer season for the company. The in-house crisis management organization began assessing the situation once the scale of the problem had become known. Thrice-daily crisis meetings were held at the airline's headquarters. Icelandair tried to operate as many passenger flights as possible, keeping its hub at Keflavík open and diverting European flights to airports that were still open. The eventual closure of Keflavík due to the volcanic ash cloud coincided with an improvement of the situation towards Europe, which allowed Icelandair to move its headquarters with 200 staff to Glasgow and operate flights from there for ten days, with shuttle flights to Iceland's Akureyri Airport and round-the-clock bus shuttles onwards to Reykjavík.
The Icelandair Group was owner of Bluebird Cargo until 2010.
Livery
Boeing 757-256, registration TF-IST, built 2000, serial number 29307 Keflavik International Airport (KEF), Keflavik, Iceland, 8 June 2013
