Think of Iceland and you may imagine the northern lights, smoked fish and the world’s oldest parliament, the Althing. Those in the airline business might also consider Icelandair, the Nordic island’s flag carrier.
Situated on the great circle route from Europe to North America (see map), Icelandair is a great choice for travellers who want as little flying time as possible but would like to save some money by not flying direct. It is also an excellent case study in how airlines deploy aircraft to build a schedule.
(Based on Icelandair flights departing 3-Aug-2022, captured on 14-Mar-2022 – some Icelandair destinations like Anchorage are not featured because there are no flights on these days)
Talk to any network planner and she will tell you that the schedule is the product. Plush business class seats, comfy lounges, tasty catering and exciting in-flight entertainment all take second place to the network. After all, without any flights taking people where they want to go nobody would ever fly.
Icelandair’s network is extremely well designed for connections (see chart). Their flights to Europe leave Iceland in the morning, ready for passengers who have just arrived overnight from America. After spending an average of just 70 minutes in a European airport, the aircraft return home with an average flying time three hours 25 minutes. These are the blue bars on the chart.
Passengers wait only a few hours in Iceland before their connecting flight leaves for America, taking five and a half hours on average to reach the eastern half of the continent and between seven and a half and eight and a half hours to reach the west. At 3,600 miles from Keflavik airport, flying to Seattle from Iceland is comparable to a flight to New York from the western countries of mainland Europe.
Pre-COVID Icelandair probably had a few more US-bound flights. What I think is really elegant about their scheduling is that you can see how aircraft are sent east first then west second in a simple set of movements.
Airline networks are said to have two characteristics – breadth and depth. The breadth is the number of destinations an airline flies to. Since Icelandair is quite a small airline all things considered their network is incredibly broad due to the in-out-in-out pattern.
But because all the Europe-bound flights depart at the same time and all the America-bound flights leave at the same time too connectivity is nearly perfect, making the network incredibly deep for it’s size. Passengers flying on Icelandair have a lot of options to choose from.
Icelandair’s ability to press such a large amount of connectivity from their relatively small fleet – only 37 aircraft, mainly single-aisles – is truly impressive. I nominate them for best-designed airline network in the world.
This style of network has other advantages too. Since flights to Europe leave Iceland in the morning they are a good option for Iceland-based business travellers who want a reasonably full day at their destination. Some destinations like London have afternoon flights to choose from too, helping travellers to Iceland make the most of their time there.
Unfortunately this network style also has costs – people visiting Iceland from another country will in many cases find that their return flight is early in the morning, effectively wasting the last night in a hotel. Iceland is an expensive country and some holiday makers might be put off by Icelandair’s schedule. I think that is a fair price for Icelandair to pay for their wide range of destinations and excellent connectivity.
Are you interested in airline scheduling and network planning. I always enjoy talking about these things – let me know if you want to have a chat.
oliver AT ransonpricing DOT com