Icelandair is known for its creative business model of one-stop connectivity between North America and Europe via Iceland, thanks to the advantageous geography of its home base. The airline has just announced a new destination, which is kind of outside the carrier’s typical expansion strategy.
Icelandair adds Keflavik to Istanbul route
As of September 5, 2025, Icelandair will be launching a new 4x weekly flight between Keflavik (KEF) and Istanbul (IST). The flight will operate with the following schedule:
FI900 Keflavik to Istanbul departing 3:25PM arriving 11:55PM
FI901 Istanbul to Keflavik departing 7:05AM arriving 10:00AM
The 2,562-mile flight will be operated by a Boeing 737 MAX 8, featuring 160 seats, including 16 business class seats and 144 economy class seats. The eastbound flight is blocked at 5hr30min, and will operate on Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, while the westbound flight is blocked at 5hr55min, and will operate on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.
As you can see, the aircraft and crew utilization there isn’t ideal, but that’s also because Icelandair heavily times its flights around connectivity. Crews will have long layovers, ranging anywhere from 31 hours to 55 hours.
Up until now, Helsinki was Icelandair’s easternmost destination, but now Istanbul will take that title.
This explains the Icelandair & Turkish Airlines partnership
In the summer of 2023, Icelandair and Turkish Airlines announced a partnership, which confused me. That’s because at the time, Icelandair didn’t fly to Istanbul, and Turkish Airlines didn’t fly to Keflavik, so it seemed like there were very limited situations where that would actually be useful to consumers.
I figured that sooner or later, we’d either see Turkish Airlines fly to Keflavik, Icelandair fly to Istanbul, or both. So I guess you can say that the other shoe has dropped now.
What makes this route so interesting is that it’s one of Icelandair’s few routes that’s not about connecting people to or from North America. Instead, the focus of this route is clearly on getting people between Iceland and Asia (including the Middle East). The schedule of the flight is even timed so that it matches Turkish Airlines’ biggest bank of flights.
Turkish Airlines flies to more countries than any other airline in the world, so this opens up all kinds of new one-stop routings to Iceland. If anything, I’m just a bit surprised that it’s Icelandair adding the route, and not Turkish Airlines. Turkish Airlines is growing at a fast pace, and already flies to more countries than any other airline, so you’d think this would be an easy “pin” for the airline to add to its map.
Here’s how Icelandair CEO Bogi Nils Bogason describes this new route:
“I look forward to adding the great destination of Istanbul to our extensive route network and to further expand the partnership with Turkish Airlines, opening convenient connections between Iceland and the east. In recent years, we have seen increased interest in travel between Asia and Iceland and with these new connections, we are further strengthening our sales and distribution network. We are excited to continue reinforcing our route network as well as connecting to exciting markets for our customers and tourism in Iceland.”
Bottom line
For once, Icelandair isn’t expanding in North America or Western Europe, but is instead heading further east. As of September 2025, the airline will launch year-round flights between Keflavik and Istanbul. Thanks to a partnership with Turkish Airlines, this will enable plenty of one-stop connectivity to Iceland from destinations across Asia and the Middle East.
It’s cool to see Icelandair trying something new, and not thinking exclusively about transatlantic service.
What do you make of Icelandair adding Istanbul flights?
