If you wish to see the journey report from my superior journey to Iceland final yr, I’ll hyperlink to it right here:
Iceland, Half I: Introduction
Iceland, Half II: Snaefellsness Peninsula
Iceland, Half III: Into the Westfjords and Dynjandi
Iceland, Half IV: Djupavik and probably the most distant swimming pool on this planet
Iceland, Half V: Hvítserkur and a number of driving
Iceland, Half VI: Aldeyjarfoss and a few pleasant Dutch folks
Iceland, Finale: The Touristy Southern Coast
Eight days later, September 14, WOW Air’s rival, Icelandair, introduced that they, too, would fly to DFW, beginning simply six days after WOW Air’s inaugural.
Okay it was getting bizarre at this level. DFW went from having nothing to having two almost-daily nonstops to Reykjavik. Certainly there wasn’t sufficient demand to maintain up with two flights to a vacationer vacation spot like Iceland, proper?
Properly, simply two months later, American additionally introduced service from DFW to Reykjavik.
Airline competitors out within the open
Clients actually don’t get too many apparent glimpses into airline competitors, for 2 causes: 1) there’s simply not that a lot apparent competitors, we extra usually see when airways blatantly copy one another (e.g. American and United copying Delta’s revenue-based mileage incomes program and Delta one way or the other not having an issue with it) and a pair of) many of the precise competitors occurs within the margins of buyer segmentation (“ha! we made extra with our full flex refundable 3-day superior buy fare requiring a 7-night minimal keep than they did, nerd 5!”). Typically, although, we get to see it, like Delta flying the inaugural of their shiny new A220 plane from LGA to none apart from DFW, a route dominated by American.
Boy did we see airline competitors with DFW-KEF. American wasn’t going to simply sit there whereas not one however TWO new worldwide airways with onward connections to Europe moved into American’s residence airport. American’s flights to Europe are BIG enterprise. Heck, DFW-London alone generates over $300 million of income per yr for American!
Let’s face the information of flying to Iceland for American: they must compete with the low costs of WOW and Icelandair. They’d additionally should pay contract workers at KEF, pay (Icelandair, really) for lounge entry for its frequent flyers, and the service contracts that went together with it. You’re speaking a couple of vital funding of cash to launch a brand new route, and American was prepared to do it, on a route they had been virtually sure to lose cash on, simply to guard their European market share.
The flights took off into the skies…fares didn’t
Upfront of the primary flights launching, folks had been skeptical that the flights would final very lengthy. The introductory fares did nothing to quell the naysayers, as WOW provided flights for as little as $99 every means. When American kinda matched these costs and provided roundtrips for $398 I completely jumped on it and booked a flight of my very own final yr!
I really obtained to go see the WOW Air jet earlier than it left on the inaugural flight between DFW-KEF, took some nice footage too! Icelandair and American left on their inaugurals only a few weeks later. All the pieces was regular.
Monetary calamity for WOW Air
For these of you unaware, flying throughout the Atlantic Ocean is dear for airways (though gasoline prices have been low for almost all of the previous decade). Low-cost airways have tried to counter the expense by providing low or no-frill service at decrease fares. This may be very worthwhile, however sadly WOW Air grew too fast. Amidst huge monetary losses, WOW introduced they had been pulling out of quite a few US markets, together with DFW. DFW was down to 2 Iceland flights. In November 2018, WOW, not having sufficient money to proceed working and after a bond providing didn’t increase practically sufficient cash, introduced that they had been merging with Icelandair. Shortly after, although, the merger fell aside and WOW Air stopped working utterly.
Icelandair struggles
Icelandair needed to attempt to match WOW’s explosive progress over the previous few years or else danger going beneath themselves. They expanded into markets that didn’t make monetary sense simply to guard their market share. Shortly after WOW Air introduced they had been pulling out of DFW, Icelandair adopted swimsuit. Their seasonal flight resulted in October 2018 and Icelandair introduced it will not return in 2019. DFW was down to at least one Iceland flight.
American Airways claims victory
Let’s revisit that hilarious Boris Johnson meme from earlier (which isn’t a political assertion by the best way, it simply illustrates my level so completely I had to make use of it).
WOW and Icelandair crumbled, and American Airways stood tall in 2019 as the only supplier of nonstop flights between DFW and Iceland. Fares elevated however had been nonetheless low, as a result of they didn’t have worthwhile enterprise vacationers going to Iceland, solely vacationers and, primarily, photographers.
…after which the Iceland dream stopped. In August 2019, American introduced their seasonal Europe schedule for 2020…and the nonstop flight to Iceland would depart from Philadelphia, not DFW.
After October 25, 2019, there’ll not be a nonstop flight from DFW to Iceland.
Why did American do that? Properly, PHL is 1100 miles nearer to Reykjavik than DFW, PHL is a low-cost hub for American, and it’s extremely near the PA/NJ/NYC megalopolis. So, little question that there have been a number of compelling causes for American to alter the flight to Philly.
…additionally, guess who else flies to Iceland from PHL: Icelandair.
(Because the flight goes away quickly, the girlfriend and I are heading off to Iceland this weekend for a fast journey earlier than the flight goes away from DFW, which obtained me fascinated about the historical past of the route and simply how fascinating it was to really see the financial impacts of airline competitors at my residence airport. I hope you loved this temporary recap of how in simply two years DFW went from having zero nonstops to Iceland to a few again to zero!)