If you’re travelling to Iceland from Manchester you have two direct choices. Easyjet or Icelandair.  If you’re flying from elsewhere, there maybe other options that I’ve not touched on here.

Price and comfort are my two main drivers when selecting a flight and on this occasion the Icelandic national carrier won the price battle by a mile.  Unless there’s an exceptional reason I’m quite happy in the average economy seat for a flight of just over two hours and didn’t give any serious consideration to a better class of travel.

Icelandair economy seat wins on a few other points.

Hold luggage is included. And while I’m happy to drop my skimpy bikini into my hand luggage for a trip to the sun, Iceland in March demands a little more in the way of heavy coat, think jumpers, thermals and bring your own snacks as it costs a fortune to eat there. So hold luggage is good. And not the c£30 each x two legs Easyjet wanted.

Complimentary soft drinks and hot drinks may seem like a small thing. But the two drinks I got would cost over £5 on the orange competition.  It’s also quite a civilised way to treat a passenger.

Free seat selection. Repeated at online check in when you can move to row 7 for free and enjoy legroom a giraffe would kill for. That said, the online seat booking, the Seatguru web site and reality of plane layout left a bit to be desired, although not in a way that caused a problem.  Getting into the front 15 rows of an Icelandair plane seems to be the way to go for free extra legroom.

In flight entertainment. Movies, music, comedy. It’s all there. You don’t have to spend two and a half hours listening to a sales pitch.  I can’t think of any other airline that offers this on such a short flight.

A loyalty scheme. I missed a trick here and didn’t join. If I had I’d have been able to spend points earned outbound on the return flight. Enough to buy two small boxes of Pringles that would set back the non-savvy flyer €6! That’s nearly 10% of the one way fare!  So while the likelihood of being a frequent flyer with the airline is slim, there is short term value to being a member!

In other words, if the price is close between Easyjet and Icelandair I’m going with Icelandair every time.  They also connect to Greenland which interests me …

Shrinking Tumours