Iceland Express

If you flew to Iceland from Copenhagen, London or Friedrichshafen in the mid-2000s, you suddenly had an alternative to Icelandair: Iceland Express. The brand promised cheap tickets to Keflavík and made Iceland affordable for many for the first time. For spotters, though, Iceland Express was above all a puzzle on wheels. Under the same titles flew British Boeing 737s, Swiss MD-90s and Czech A320s, because the airline never owned aircraft of its own. Here you learn how the model worked, who flew for Iceland Express and when, and how to assign old photos correctly.

Iceland Express at a glance

Iceland Express was an Icelandic low-cost airline headquartered in Reykjavík with its base at Keflavík Airport. It was founded in 2002 as a direct challenger to Icelandair, which until then served virtually all scheduled traffic between Iceland and abroad on its own. In December 2002, the company received its authorization as a travel organizer in Iceland, and in February 2003 the first flights took off.

The special thing about Iceland Express was its construction: legally it was not an airline in the strict sense but a provider that bought flight capacity and sold it under its own brand. Aircraft, cockpit crews and maintenance came from other airlines. This is called a virtual airline. For passengers it looked like a normal budget airline with its own name on the fuselage. For spotters, a different operator was behind every Iceland Express jet.

The advertising promise in Icelandic, by the way, was “Með ánægju!”, freely translated “With pleasure!”. At times its leadership included Matthías Imsland and Skarphéðinn Berg Steinarsson, among others.

Codes and callsign: the airline without its own designator

For most airlines, a profile begins with the IATA and ICAO codes. With Iceland Express that is difficult. Because the brand had no air operator’s certificate of its own, flights ran in air traffic control under the operator’s codes. When Astraeus flew, the crew identified itself with the callsign FLYSTAR, and the flight plan showed the ICAO code AEU. For the brand itself, reference sources give different codes, none of which is reliably documented.

For you as a spotter that means: in old radio recordings or archive data, the name Iceland Express often doesn’t appear at all. Callsign and registration are what matter. How the two code systems are built is explained in the article IATA and ICAO codes explained, and background on radio names is provided by Airline callsigns and their history.

The history in stages

The start: daily to Copenhagen and London

For the opening, Iceland Express relied on a lean program: Boeing 737-300s, leased from the British Astraeus, flew from Keflavík to Copenhagen and to London Stansted. The choice of destinations was no coincidence: Copenhagen is traditionally Iceland’s gateway to Scandinavia, and London the most important market in Western Europe.

The concept was classic for a budget airline: tickets mainly online, simple fares, point-to-point connections instead of connecting traffic. Spotting tips for the Danish end point are provided by the guide Plane spotting at Copenhagen Kastrup. How low-cost airlines make their numbers work and why they so often rely on leased capacity is explained in the article How budget airlines work.

Owners with big plans

Behind Iceland Express stood the Icelandic holding company Northern Travel Holding. In the boom years before the financial crisis, its owners thought big: in 2005 they bought the Danish airlines Sterling and Maersk Air, merged them and later passed them on to the Icelandic FL Group in exchange for shares. Later Sterling again belonged to the orbit of Northern Travel Holding.

In September 2008, the investment company Fons fully took over Northern Travel Holding. Shortly afterward, Iceland Express moved to the sister company Fengur, which had the same main owners. Astraeus also belonged entirely to Fengur. That put brand and operator under one roof for a few years – one reason why Astraeus again took over all Iceland Express flights from 2008. After the collapse of the Icelandic banks in fall 2008, the economic environment for the airline became considerably rougher.

Who flew for Iceland Express?

The list of operators is the heart of this airline. Depending on the year, a completely different company with its own fleet, its own registration prefix and its own callsign was behind the name.

Operator	Country	Period (approx.)	Types for Iceland Express	Typical registration
Astraeus	United Kingdom	2003 to about 2005	Boeing 737-300	G- (e.g. G-STRB, G-STRE)
JetX	Iceland	around 2005	McDonnell Douglas MD-82	TF- (TF-JXA, TF-JXB)
Hello	Switzerland	2006 to 2008	McDonnell Douglas MD-90, at times a 757-200	HB- (e.g. HB-JIC, HB-JID, HB-JIF)
Astraeus	United Kingdom	Fall 2008 to November 2011	Boeing 737-300, 737-500, 737-700, 757-200	G- (e.g. G-STRN, G-STRJ, G-STRX)
Holidays Czech Airlines	Czech Republic	November 2011 to October 2012	Airbus A320 with 180 seats	OK-

The exact transitions are not dated consistently in the sources, and the number of aircraft per operator is also given differently. At times Iceland Express additionally leased individual aircraft from other airlines, such as an A320 from the Slovenian Adria Airways.

JetX and Hello: the MD years

JetX’s MD-82s (some sources say MD-83) came from SAS’s fleet and carried Icelandic TF- registrations. JetX later merged into Primera Air. The phase with the Swiss charter airline Hello from Basel was bigger and shaped things for longer. It supplied several MD-90s complete with crew, maintenance and insurance, under a three-year contract. The MD-90, with its rear-fuselage-mounted engines, was an unusual sight for low-cost flights to Iceland. The contract with Hello was not renewed in 2008.

You tell the MD-82 and MD-90 apart mainly by the engines: the MD-90 has much thicker nacelles, the MD-80 family the slim, long nacelles of the older generation. An overview of the whole family is provided by the page on the MD-80 family.

Astraeus: 737s and 757s with G registrations

From fall 2008, Astraeus again supplied the aircraft, initially two Boeing 737-700s. With the expansion came Boeing 737-300s, a 737-500 and, from 2010, several Boeing 757-200s. In 2011 the Iceland Express fleet comprised seven aircraft according to a retrospective: three 757-200s, two 737-700s and two 737-300s.

A detail for connoisseurs: among the 757s photographed with Iceland Express titles is also G-STRX. This very aircraft flew in 2011 as “Ed Force One” for the band Iron Maiden – Astraeus leased its 757s to very different customers. How to tell the 737 generations apart on photos is shown in the article Telling the Boeing 737 Original, Classic, NG and MAX apart.

The route network: from Europe to Winnipeg

Besides Copenhagen and London, numerous European destinations were added over the years, many of them only in summer. The 2012 schedule, that is, after the Astraeus collapse, shows the remaining network:

Destination	Airport	Flights per week (2012)	Season
Copenhagen	CPH	12	year-round
London	STN	10	year-round
Alicante	ALC	3	spring to fall
Berlin	SXF	3	spring to fall
Warsaw	WAW	3	spring to fall
Frankfurt-Hahn	HHN	2	summer
Billund	BLL	2	summer
Gothenburg	GOT	2	summer
Basel	BSL	1	summer
Barcelona, Bologna, Kraków, Paris CDG	–	1 each	summer or fall

In the years before, the network was at times larger, for example with the North America routes. At times, including in summer 2012, Iceland Express also connected Copenhagen directly with Akureyri in the north and Egilsstaðir in the east of Iceland – a rarity, since almost all of Iceland’s international flights run via Keflavík.

Iceland Express in Germany

For spotters in Germany, Iceland Express was seen mainly at three places: at Friedrichshafen Airport on Lake Constance, at Frankfurt-Hahn Airport in the Hunsrück and in Berlin-Schönefeld, today the site of BER. Photos from Friedrichshafen show the Astraeus 737-700 G-STRN in Iceland Express colors in early 2010, and from the years before also MD-90s from Hello. Just across the border came EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse, Hello’s home.

If you spot at Hahn today, you will find tips in the guide Plane spotting at Hahn Airport.

The leap to North America

In June 2010, Iceland Express dared the step across the Atlantic: four flights a week to Newark near New York and two to Winnipeg in Canada, flown with a 737 and two 757s from Astraeus. In the winter schedule Newark stayed in the program year-round, and Orlando was added seasonally. In 2011 the airline announced further destinations, including Chicago, Boston, Miami and Belfast. Which of these were actually served, the sources present differently; Miami and Belfast, by most accounts, never materialized.

The idea was the same one Icelandair has worked with for decades: Iceland as a stopover between Europe and North America. For an airline without aircraft of its own that depended on a single operator, however, it was a risky game.

The end: first the operator, then the brand

On November 21, 2011, Astraeus ceased flight operations with immediate effect. That left Iceland Express without aircraft at a stroke – exactly the risk of a virtual model. Holidays Czech Airlines, a subsidiary of Czech Airlines, stepped in at short notice with Airbus A320s with 180 seats. In spring 2012, both sides concluded a new contract that was to run until spring 2013.

With only two aircraft left, the previous network could not be maintained. The North America routes were dropped, and cuts were made in Europe as well. At the same time competition got tougher: besides Icelandair, Germanwings and easyJet flew to Iceland, and in 2012 a new Icelandic budget airline, WOW air, started, whose first flight on May 31, 2012, went to Paris.

In summer 2012, talks began between the two Icelandic low-cost providers. On October 23, 2012, WOW air took over the route network, brand and customer base of Iceland Express; tickets already sold remained valid. A few days later, WOW air laid off the Iceland Express employees, including the cabin crew, and ended the contract with Holidays Czech. That made the brand history after almost ten years. An overview of comparable collapses is provided by the article Major airline failures in Europe.

How to recognize Iceland Express

Today you see Iceland Express only on photos and in archives. Assigning it is trickier than with a classic airline, because titles and operator diverge:

• Titles on the fuselage: “Iceland Express” in the brand’s colors – the first hint, but not the last.
• Registration: It reveals the operator and thus usually the period as well. The basics are explained in the article Understanding aircraft registrations.
• Type: MD-82 and MD-90 belong to the mid-2000s, 737-700 and 757 to the years 2008 to 2011, A320 to the final phase.
• Place and time: Keflavík, Copenhagen and Stansted year-round, German destinations mostly in summer.

What remains of Iceland Express

• Competition in Iceland: Iceland Express proved that there is room for a budget brand next to Icelandair. WOW air and later PLAY continued this idea.
• The wet-lease principle: Leased jets with other airlines’ titles remain part of everyday summer operations to this day. How that works, you can read in Wet lease explained. Icelandic specialists such as Air Atlanta Icelandic live off exactly that.
• Iceland as a bridge across the Atlantic: The idea goes back to Loftleiðir, which offered cheap Atlantic flights via Iceland as early as the 1950s and 1960s.

Common mix-ups

• Confusing Iceland Express with Icelandair – Icelandair is the long-established network airline, Iceland Express was its budget competitor.
• Taking every Iceland Express aircraft for Icelandic – most carried British, Swiss or Czech registrations.
• Assigning the Astraeus callsign to an airline of its own – FLYSTAR belonged to Astraeus, even when Iceland Express was on the fuselage.
• Taking Iceland Express for the predecessor of PLAY – its direct heir was WOW air, PLAY only came about after its end.

Conclusion

Iceland Express was an airline without aircraft – and that is exactly why it is so exciting for spotters. Under one name, British Boeing 737s and 757s, Icelandic MD-82s, Swiss MD-90s and Czech A320s flew for almost ten years. The brand brought cheap Iceland flights to Copenhagen, London, Berlin or Lake Constance and even dared the leap to North America in 2010. When the most important operator collapsed in November 2011, the model could no longer be sustained. A year later, Iceland Express was absorbed into WOW air.