I went to a two-week trip to Angola, Sao Tome and Principe, Gabon, Côte d'Ivoire and Bissau Guinea. The plan was to take the following flights:
Keflavík to Lisbon, Icelandair
Lisbon to Luanda, TAAG
Luanda to São Tomé, TAAG
São Tomé to Principe, STP Airways
Principe to Sao Tomé, STP Airways
Sao Tome to Libreville, ASKY
Libreville to Cotonou to Abidjan, Air Côte d’Ivoire
Abidjan to Lomé, ASKY
Lomé to Dakar to Bissau, ASKY
Bissau to Lisbon, TAP
I arrived to the airport about 90 minutes before departure. The Icelandair ad shows Lisbon as a destination, although it was added not a very long time ago.
Despite many flights leaving in the afternoon, both to the US and to Europe, the airport was not crowded.
I had fast track security and there was zero waiting time.
A recent addition to the airport is Aðalstræti (Main Street in Icelandic) with a pizzeria, a burger restaurant and a bar. Check how many people are waiting before you order: service was so slow when we were there the previous week that by the time the pizzas were ready most customers who had ordered them had already their boarding had started.
Follow this sign to go to the lounge.
There's only one lounge at Keflavík Airport
An Icelandair model plane inside the lounge.
The lounge has the same layout and choice of drinks as before - see one of my previous flight reports here.
There was however some Christmas food available:
Prosecco is very popular in Iceland but I had some French white wine.
Boarding was from gate A3 on the new part of the airport. It had already started and there was no queue. Boarding was through a jetbridge - all good.
Several Icelandair planes on the apron:
Our plane was a B737 MAX 8, built in 2019.
Icelandair has US Domestic type business class seats. Not as comfortable as long-haul flat bed seats, but much more comfortable than the typical intra-European business class seats that most airlines offer. Seats 2AC:
Business class seats on the right side.
There were four rows of seats in a 2+2 configuration. Load on this flight was only 5/16 and the load in economy also seemed to be very light. Icelandair's average load factor for all flights was 83.5% in November.
Water was waiting on the seat.
Headsets were distributed shortly after.
An expected flight time of four hours and 25 minutes was announced.
Push-back was at 15.54 for a scheduled departure time of 16.00. We took off at 16.10 from runway 10.
View of the town of Keflavik after take-off.
The Reykjanes peninsula seen from the West to the East, with Reykjavík in the background.
These two photos show the Blue Mountains on Southern part of Reykjanes.
There's a very good choice of drinks.
I had a Lemoncello Spritz.
There was no choice for the meal service. I had disappointing experiences on some of my recent Icelandair flights about catering in business class with a clear feeling of cost-cutting. The food that was served on this flight was however of good quality.
Service was very friendlly, some of the friendliest I've had onboard Icelandair this year.
In-flight entertainment offers 66 movies, 231 TV shows and 534 music songs.
I was watching a movie that was set on the Orkneys and there was a scene about a flight with the same plane I had flown on on the shortest flight from Westray to Papa Westray.
A second service came two hours and 40 minutes after departure with a choice of snacks. I had some chips with a Malt og appelsín, an Icelandic soft drink.
We were getting closer to Lisbon. View on the Vasco de Gama Bridge seconds before landing:
We landed at 20.32 and were at the gate at 20.38 for a scheduled arrival time of 20.20.
