Icelandair Reviews 

Our flight was disrupted due to bad weather in Iceland. But one would expect an airline in Iceland to be prepared for such an eventuality. When we called, the voicemail said a 10 minute wait. After more than an hour, we hung up. The music they play seems to be deliberately adverse, with siren sounds and pauses that make you think you will be connected, then the unpleasant sounds resume. After many hours, we finally got a confusing email that ultimately we were booked on Delta, and needed to work with them. The Delta customer experience was much better. On a minor note, on the flight out they only provide free coffee, tea or water. No sodas or snacks. Unlike most other transatlantic flights with a full meal. No more Icelandair flights for us!

I had a decent flight to USA connected in Iceland and then over to Dulles.
The staff were helpful and friendly
The food was ok and the plane was clean and comfortable. It had TVs in the seat backs and earphones were the €3 if you wanted them. Nothing is free drinks and food are all paid for but we knew that (kind of!)
For the money I’d recommend Iceland air. No frill as such but if you take food and water it’s ok.
The confusing thing was buying and paying for 2 exit seats that was sat in pending in my bank the day before we flew so I didn’t know if we actually had them and the chat wasn’t helpful in resolving this. We did have an exit seat in the end but I wasn’t sure until we got to the airport. I don’t known why they don’t take the money & confirm as it was paid for? This is slightly stressful just before a long flight home. No one really checked the hand luggage in this instance but we did have cases that fitted into the luggage test box.

The initial diversion wasn’t the airline’s fault. After three aborted landing attempts due to bad weather, we were diverted to Reykjavík Airport instead of Keflavík International Airport. Unpleasant? Yes. Understandable? Also yes.
What wasn’t understandable was what happened next.
We sat on the tarmac at Reykjavík Airport for four and a half hours with almost no information or updates. No food. No proper drinks. Just one small cup of water offered the entire time. People were tired, stressed, and confused, and the lack of basic communication made everything worse.
Eventually, we were flown in terrible weather on the 15-minute hop to Keflavík, only to be told: “Get on the bus, you’re going to a hotel and dinner will be provided.” Everyone reasonably expected a short ride to an airport hotel.
Instead, the bus drove nearly two hours north of the airport — literally passing the airport we had just spent 4.5 hours stranded at. No warning. No explanation. Just a two-hour ride in the middle of the night with no water provided. Are you serious?
When we finally arrived, the hotel had not been told to provide food. To their credit, the staff tried their best and scraped together a sandwich and a drink. That was it.
So now you have elderly passengers, kids, exhausted travelers who hadn’t eaten or properly drank in 10 hours, put on a 2-hour bus ride with no warning, no water, and no real plan communicated. By the end of the day, I had eaten one sandwich and had one bottle of water I bought myself. I also missed my connecting flight to Toronto.
To top it off, I was given no clear information about how or when I’d be taken back to the airport the next day. I’m apparently supposed to wait for another mystery bus for another two-hour ride back. The whole situation felt chaotic, disorganised, and shockingly indifferent to passenger wellbeing. I was nearly passing out from dehydration on the bus.
Bad weather happens. That’s life.
But leaving people without information, food, water, or a basic plan is not okay. This was a complete failure of care, communication, and basic human decency.

I’m always having pleasant flights with Iceland air . One time my flight got canceled and I got refund for the extra day of stay , taxis to the airport and back and also for the cancel itself .

I had an extremely negative experience with Icelandair at Miami International Airport and would strongly advise travellers to think twice before flying with them.

At the check-in desk, a staff member claimed that my carry-on bag was too large. However, there was no sizing rack available to verify this. When I asked for a way to measure the bag against Icelandair’s carry-on limits, the request was refused.

At the boarding gate, the same issue was raised again, but only with me and my cousin. Staff demanded payment for our bags and told us that if we did not pay, we would be denied boarding. I was charged $200 for my carry-on bag, and my cousin was charged $200 for a personal item.

At the same time, several other passengers were boarding with visibly larger carry-on bags and personal items without being stopped or charged.

When my cousin tried to point out the inconsistency, staff became hostile and told us to stop talking or we would be denied boarding altogether. We were initially refused boarding and were only allowed to proceed after apologising for raising the issue.

We paid the charges under pressure because we were told we would not be allowed to board the flight otherwise.

After the trip, I contacted Icelandair customer service to report what had happened. The response was dismissive, and the airline refused to investigate the incident or refund the unfair charges.

Based on this experience, the treatment we received was unfair, unprofessional, and extremely disappointing.

I would not recommend this airline for the following reasons:
1. In coach not even a soft drink is free, only a cup of water.
2. Carry on baggage criteria is the worst I have ever seen--we had to purchase carry on bags specifically for this flight as the dimension requirements are far harsher than any other airline.
3. Entertainment is the worst I have seen. Movie choices are so bad and limited as to be bizarre.
4. Business class is a letdown-seats don't recline enough.
5. Staff is non chalant at best.
6. Nickel and diming erodes any cost savings.
7. In our particular case we paid for upgrades to Business Class and were not assigned seats together. When we inquired, staff was rude and basically said tough luck.

This is the most terrible Airway I ever have a flight with! They overbooked my flight to USA januar 2025 (one year ago), and they promised me 600 dollars for a new booking from Island to USA! Now over one year ago nothing is still happening! Stay away this Airways! Terrible, terrible!

Denied boarding on my flight to Vancouver.
At the airport Air Iceland staff told me the ticket would be refunded. Later they refused and only returned airport taxes.
Very disappointing experience and poor customer communication.

I used to enjoy flying with Icelandair, but this airline has changed a lot, and not for the best. While Saga Class is fine but expensive, Economy is also expensive and a real nightmare.
We were seated in the second-to-last row, in an extremely cramped aircraft with the bare minimum amount of legroom. During the refreshment service, I politely asked the passenger in front of us to return their seat to the upright position so we could use our tray table, and they kindly did so. However, a stressed-out flight attendant immediately approached us in a rather agitated manner. She insisted that reclining is a passenger’s right and I should not have disturbed my fellow passenger. She then reclined their seats again, and attempted to recline ours as well, despite our preference not to, getting unpleasantly close to us in the process. She proceded to tell us, at length, that we should keep our seats reclined at all times, even while eating, the reason being that if everyone reclined their seats, everyone would have plenty of space, without any consideration for the last row behind us, where the seats cannot be reclined. The tone of the interaction felt unnecessarily aggressive and confrontational. I understand that seat reclining is allowed, even in the tiniest and most cramped aircraft, but so it's using my tray table.
Icelandair is a rather expensive airline, and in the future I will certainly never buy one of their overpriced tickets again only to be squeezed into a tiny space and to be told off by a very rude flight assistent.

I am extremely disappointed with how my baggage claim was handled. My new luggage was completely torn apart during transit. I reported the damage immediately at the airport and submitted all the required documents promptly.
The suitcase cost me $840, and despite providing proper proof of purchase and complying with every procedure, the airline offered only $100 in compensation. That amount does not come close to covering the damage or replacing the bag.
It is unacceptable that such a major airline cannot take responsibility for clearly mishandled baggage. Very poor customer service and an even poorer resolution process. Truly disappointing.

I contacted IcelandAir's chat support. I have a return ticket, and my question was, if I do not take the outbound flight, would my ticket still be valid for the return flight. Reason being that I was invited to an event in a different city, so I was looking at buying a separate flight from there to Iceland on another day in stead.

I was told that since I have a return ticket, if I want to NOT use part of it, I would have to pay 125 USD for a ticket change. 125 USD to get out of flying with them.

God damn it, I hate airlines and their purely commercial, anti-consumerist views on pricing and policies without any foundation in operational cost or burden. I guess I will be looking forward to going to Iceland as planned then.

To top it all off, after informing me of this, I had to take a few breaths before writing the next response. A few minutes passed without me answering, and the chat was disconnected without a word or any warning.

I am sure that some, maybe even many, people have normal to positive flying experience when flying Icelandair but travelers should be wary, flying with this carrier is essentially gambling. We had several uneventful trips from the US to Iceland and around Europe, but when returning to the US from Copenhagen we had a terrible gate crew. This gate crew would seemingly select bags at random and state they were "too heavy" despite not weighing them nor would they give you the opportunity to weigh them if you asked or protested. They would also declare bags "too big" for the under-seat compartment, but if you asked to demonstrate that you could fit your bag in the metal size guide, they would not let you. In addition to this happening to both myself and my husband, I watched this happen to multiple other people.

There was also a glitch with their app causing boarding passes to disappear and requiring you to go up to the desk to get a new one printed out. This happened to me. I had to give the gate agent my passport to get a new ticket and once she had it she declared my personal item was too big (it wasn't) when I offered to go show her in the size guide her coworker came up behind her and said my carry-on bag was too heavy. I knew for a fact It weighed less than 9kg, and asked if they had a scale. She, still holding my passport, said I needed to check a bag. The line of people behind me were getting angry and since they weren't letting me prove my bags fit their policy I paid to check the bag. Then I waited for my husband to go through the line.

I watched this happen to person after person in line before my husband's roller bag (maybe the size small backpack) was again declared "too heavy" sans a scale by another gate agent and he was forced to check and was not given the opportunity to prove his bag met the weight guidelines when he asked to prove it would.

Customer service for Icelandair would not help. They stood behind the decisions of their gate agents. When I pointed out we had flown on another carrier that very morning and had to meet a more stringent weight requirement so it was factually verifiably provable that our bags could not have been too heavy, the customer service agent stated they were "not able to offer a refund or compensation for this charge."

I had one of the worst customer service experiences I have ever encountered with this airline. As a person with a disability, I was extremely disappointed to learn that they wanted to charge additional money just to assign an appropriate seat. Charging someone with a disability for necessary seating accommodations feels discriminatory and completely unacceptable.

To make matters worse, the customer service agent, Rileen, was incredibly rude and dismissive. When I politely requested to speak with a manager, I was simply told “no” without any explanation or attempt to resolve the issue. There was no empathy, no professionalism, and no willingness to help.

Airlines should prioritize accessibility and treat passengers with disabilities with respect and dignity. Instead, I was left feeling unheard, frustrated, and discriminated against. I would strongly reconsider booking with this airline again based on this experience.

Where to start.... We were caught up in the flight cancellations at the end of October 2025 and we made a claim through their website. Icelandair refunded our flight costs fairly quickly so we thought all was well. 110 days later - yes, that's one hundred and ten days later, we are still waiting to agree the expenses part of our refund. They made an initial offer of less than 50% of our claim on 4th December. 6-weeks and several emails later including to the CEO who obviously couldn't care less as it took his "office" another 6-weeks to reply, we received a revised offer of 80% of our claim. No breakdown, no explanation, lots of "sincere apologies". We are now 30-days in to the next email chasing process.....

I have complained to Icelandair and they won't answer me at all. Seriously bad customer service!

Icelandair is a fascinating airline if you enjoy discovering how low expectations can go even in business class.

We flew business class on a transatlantic route (Miami → Reykjavik → Zurich). What awaited us was not a premium long-haul experience, but a nostalgic reminder of European short-haul flights from the early 2000s: seats lined up directly behind each other, no privacy, no space, and the instant physical limitation that occurs the moment the passenger in front reclines. And that in transatlantic business class. Lie-flat seats? No. Long-haul amenities commonly offered by other airlines on comparable routes? Also no. Calling this “business class” is ambitious branding at best.

Customer service is an adventure of its own. Reaching the hotline requires patience, luck, and ideally a working knowledge of Icelandic, because the very first question you are asked is whether you speak it. If you don’t, you may eventually get someone who speaks English, though “understandable” would be an optimistic description.

Now to luggage: Despite registering and paying extra for oversized baggage well in advance (a flight case and a long bag), one piece (the bag) was deliberately not loaded in Miami. We were not informed during the flight. We were not informed upon arrival. Icelandair never contacted us at all. The only reason this didn’t completely derail our trip was the excellent Swissport Lost & Found team at Zurich Airport, who confirmed that the luggage had simply been left behind in Miami.

When we later contacted Icelandair (after the luggage had been delivered home by a courier the next week), the response was refreshingly blunt: there is never any guarantee that luggage will be transported by Icelandair. The airline may decide at any time, without explanation, to leave your bags behind, regardless of prior registration or extra payment. The subtext was clear: if you don’t want to lose your luggage, maybe don’t take it on a Icelandair flight.

In summary: Icelandair offers short-haul seating sold as long-haul business class, customer service that feels like an obstacle course, and a refreshingly honest attitude toward luggage transport: namely, that it’s optional.

Recommended for travelers who enjoy surprises, lowered expectations, and the thrill of wondering whether their belongings will join them on the trip.

Paid to upgrade. No meals provided as they ran out, lost our luggage, refused to reimburse our upgrade costs and had the cheek to offer £25 worth of their airline points which amounts to a packet of crisps on their flights. Never again.

I’ve just spent two hours on icelandair’s website trying to to book a round trip flight from Boston to Edinburgh in March. My dates are very flexible. Booking was impossible. Sometimes certain dates had availability, then they did not, then they did. There’s no ability to select ‘next day’ or ‘previous day’ as with other sites. It’s the most arcane and totally unusable website. I thought spending a layover in Iceland would be fun but reading other reviews it appears that Icelandair’s website is a tip-off on how poorly run the airline is. No thanks!

My wife and I have flown economy with Iceland Air a few times in the past, and they are the least generous airline that I’ve ever experienced. No free anything and reluctant to even give folks a complementary blanket. Just abysmal service. Despite this prior experience, we decided to book another flight going from Istanbul to Washington DC, this time in Saga business class. I had watched a few YouTube videos and was particularly excited about trying their Gin sampler. Then IA indiscriminately decides to cancel both legs of the flight, of course a week apart from each other. This made things even more painful because we had already rescheduled the first leg, only to find out that the second was eventually canceled. On top of that, there was no notification from the airline regarding the first cancellation. I just happened to go on the Iceland Air website and check my reservation under “manage flights”. Thank goodness I did! Maybe choose these folks if you really want to visit Iceland, otherwise don’t bother.

I have to say I was not impressed with Icelandair I'm afraid. They probably pass muster as a budget short haul operator but having experienced their booking system, customer service performance and 4 sectors of flying between London Heathrow, Reykjavik and New York, I thought their prices were very competitive for effectively a long haul route (indirect). It seems the reasons for this though are very high add ons costs (usual for this kind of airline) but more disappointingly, poor cabin comfort on a 6hr flight - both the A321 and B737 cabins were the most cramped I've been in for this kind of journey, no food provision, no space for hand luggage, largely disinterested staff. The website can be a bit clunky but worst of all was a mess up with added baggage that took about 45 mins of wasted time at the check in desk while the desk agent had to wait in a phone queue to talk to the bookings line who couldn't even resolve their own mess - bizarrely convoluted and inefficient system.
The Icelandair air use of keflavik airport seems to suffer a capacity problem too - a lot of the time it's pretty clunky at best with a lot of getting messed around between gates that don't have enough space, waiting for airport buses to distant aircraft stands all the while sat in winter weather conditions!