Cleveland travelers shouldn’t hold their breath. (It’s possible, according to at least one industry journalist to whom the PD’s Susan Glaser spoke, that the Max 8 concern is merely being used as a convenient excuse for Icelandair to drop an underperforming route.)
Iceland’s legacy airline now joins its economy competitor, WOW Airlines, as carriers that fleetingly offered a direct route from Hopkins to Europe. WOW pulled out of Cleveland for good in October, citing financial concerns. Both airlines had announced routes from Cleveland around the same time in 2017, ending more than a decade without transatlantic service from Hopkins.
Icelandair’s summer service was scheduled to begin in May. The Plain Dealer reports that Icelandair operates 36 total aircraft, and that three of them are Boeing 737 Max 8s. The Cleveland route used the Max 8 exclusively.
All passengers currently booked on Icelandair this summer will have the option to fly from another city or get a refund.
WOW, meanwhile, is getting its airplanes repossessed left and right and appears to be hurtling toward collapse.
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This article appears in Mar 21-24, 2019.
Why the anger and slam on Cleveland, Sam? Really, why? You played up the financial end of things when the Max 8 was as the immediate cause. Y
You would surely be happier somewhere else. Please move.
“Reykjavik,” not “Reykjavic.”