Review: IcelandAir – Amsterdam, The Netherlands to NYC

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We’ve finally reached the end of this saga. This is a recap of flight 3/3 with IcelandAir that I booked on one $940 USD ticket that basically ended up costing me $293.90 USD because my first flight was delayed and I applied for and received $646.10 USD as a result of EU Regulation 261/2004.

I talked about the second flight last week and to complete this circle, I of course have to bring the drama 🙂 . As a recap, here are my previous posts about this IcelandAir ticket:

Similar to the first flight of this ticket, there were some issues with this adventure that I’ll go into more detail below. Let’s see what happened 🙂 .

Pre-Flight

Once again, I didn’t receive a check in email but unlike my last IcelandAir flight, I wasn’t able to check in when I went directly to their website despite it being less than 24 hours before my flight. The check in button was greyed out when I went to Manage Booking. Curious 🙂 .

Transit

The morning of our flight, I reserved an Uber to pick us up. I love that this is a real thing now. Previously when I tried to use this Reserve feature in Seattle years ago, it just automatically called an Uber for you at the time you asked, but it didn’t actually reserve one.

However, now it looks like “Uber Reserve” actually makes a reservation, so that’s great 😉 . When I inputted the airport as our destination, it asked for our exact flight information and then provided a recommended departure time from our Airbnb, which I haven’t seen before either.

We ended up leaving earlier than planned based on Uber’s recommendation because of traffic and weather and I’m glad we did. After the reservation was set, I went back to cleaning our Airbnb (we always leave it the way we found it 😉 ) and before I knew it, our Uber driver messaged that he was on his way.

I replied that we were ready and when he arrived a few minutes early, we were ready to hop in and go. We then fought through rainy, traffic laden streets to arrive at the airport right on time. Nice.

Flights Details

When: December 2024
Where: Amsterdam, The Netherlands (AMS) to Reykjavík, Iceland (KEF)
Flight: FI501 (Rescheduled to FI507) & FI615
Flight Time: 3h 30m & 6h 10m
Seats: 16F & 21G
Distance: 4,686 mi

Amsterdam Schiphol (AMS) Airport

Check In

Once we arrived at the Amsterdam airport, I looked for a TV and it listed not just the gate our flight would be in (I love that they don’t make you wait for that in AMS), and what check in/bag drop counters to use.

So we made our way to Check in Section 2-3 for IcelandAir. There were kiosks to print bag tags and our boarding passes so we did that. I gave my partner my included checked bag since my 40L Backpack met carry on requirements for this flight.

Once we had his bag tags, we were a little confused. The bag tags weren’t like any we’ve seen before. They had red bullseyes on the back and said to stick the pieces together, but don’t peel off anything like we’re used to. It also said to take the end of the tag for yourself, but that didn’t peel off easily. So we were puzzled.

Not wanting to mess up the bag tag, we asked an employee we saw at the bag drop off. He said to just put the pieces together and despite not feeling sticky – they stuck together! Alrighty then. I guess I’m in the future.

Bag Drop

We then used the bag drop machines, which also looked different than I’d seen before. You put your bag on them, scan your boarding pass, confirm your info and then it basically ate the bag 🙂 . It then gave us a bag tag to keep and we were good to go.

Security

After that, we followed signs for “All Gates” and arrived at the entrance to security. We scanned our boarding passes to enter the gates, and then went through to security. There wasn’t a line and there were clear signs saying what to put into the bins provided.

The signs said to put your jacket on the bottom of the bin and to put high top shoes, liquids and bags on top of the jacket. They said nothing about taking out electronics so I didn’t. When the bin is full, you push it forward onto the conveyor belt.

I had a carry on and a personal item and was told by an employee to put one of those in another bin. Then the female employee asked me to take off my shirt (I assume she thought it was an overshirt or something….), but when I explained I only had a bra on under it she waved me through. So that was a bit weird 🙂 .

After I put my bags through, I got in line for the full body scanner, which looked like two thin walls instead of a glass tube like I’m used to. They had an outline of a person on the wall that indicated you should hold your arms down and away from your body so that’s what I did and then I was waved through.

I then grabbed my bags and it said on the wall of the conveyor belt to put your tray away. However, it looked like it automatically collected them so I wasn’t sure about that, but I put mine away anyway because I’m a rule follower like that 😉 .

The Gate

After we were through security, we headed towards our gate. When walking to the gate, my Partner pointed out that there was a place to donate your remaining Euros to an apparently good cause in the terminal. So that’s nice!

The Drama

There’s basically always drama with my travel plans. Le sigh. But at least it’s not dull for y’all I guess 😉 .

When approaching the gate, I got a text that our flight was delayed for an hour. Uh oh. We only had 1.5 hours to transfer at KEF to catch the only flight of the day to NYC so I was stressing a little bit.

However, one positive is that I got that text from IcelandAir a few minutes before my TripCase alerted me to the same change, which never happens. Usually I always hear from TripCase first. So alright IcelandAir – nice communication there.

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Of course I had been checking our flight number the last few days and they hadn’t been delayed in all the time I could see. My bad travel luck strikes again 🙂 . I tried to remember that we didn’t have anywhere to be, but it was still frustrating to be in that kind of limbo.

35 minutes later I got another text that we were delayed another hour. At that point we were definitely going to miss our flight and be stuck somewhere tonight. And while I appreciated IcelandAir’s text and email updates, they didn’t make it easy to speak to someone about this in person.

I noticed an IcelandAir employee at a gate and approached to talk to them, but they left before I got there. I then went to ask where the IcelandAir service desk was and was told that it’s before security – how exactly is that a helpful location?

Luckily, AMS airport has free Wifi so I started using that liberally to try and get in contact with IcelandAir and come up with a contingency plan.

First, I went to IcelandAir.com and a chatbot got me connected to a human person this time (unlike last time when they ghosted me during my flight from Boston 😉 ), and when I asked to be put on an earlier flight that I noticed was set to leave way before ours on the same route, they replied: “So many flights are delayed in KEF today so I would advise you arrive in KEF first as it’s likely the connecting flight will leave later as many passengers are in the same situation, if of course you do miss it we can assist in rebooking you if needed.”

Alrighty then. I was already a little concerned about what would happen to my Partner’s bags if we switched planes, so I took their advice and waited. While waiting, I came up with a plan for where we could comfortably sleep in Amsterdam, Reykjavík and NYC in case we didn’t make it all the way to Upstate NY that night.

An hour after that last text, I got another one saying our flight was further delayed 40 minutes. So overall, we were about 3 hours delayed and I prepared myself to apply to EU Regulation 261/2004 after our flight and receive €400 ($420.08 USD) per ticket for a 3 hour delay on this route.

However (spoiler), that wouldn’t end up being needed, but if it had happened, IcelandAir would have ended up paying me to take these flights, which is interesting 🙂 .

I then refreshed FlightAware flight trackers and went back to making contingency plans for how to get home for Christmas – Is this a hallmark movie or something 😉 ?

A few minutes after the last text, I got another one that said that we had been rebooked on another flight. I checked my email and saw one from IcelandAir with the rebooking information – and it was the earlier flight I wanted!

Then I just about had a heart palpitation because I got a text that our flight was delayed, but when I looked more closely, it was talking about our second flight that day from Iceland to NYC, which was good news since it gave us a greater chance of making that flight. We were rebooked to an earlier flight, but it was still a little delayed.

So we moved to the other flight’s gate, which was nearby. While doing so, we met another passenger that had a similar issue and she was also rebooked on the earlier flight a few minutes after ours and should now make her connection – Nice!

At this point, I was impressed once again by how IcelandAir handled this situation and fixed it, but I was a little frustrated that it was so impossible to talk to someone in person. However, I guess they would have given the same answer as the customer service chat and their process was more efficient, so maybe I need to let go of my wish to speak to a human face-to-face 🙂 .

At the gate, there was no agent and I realized that we no longer had valid boarding passes for this new flight so I used the free Wifi to download the IcelandAir app and saw our updated flight information and boarding passes. I also saw that they had automatically given us seats next to each other on this 3 by 3 seat plane (so my partner was in the middle seat). There were other seats we could switch to, but my Partner didn’t want to mess with it and it’s a relatively short flight, so I left it as is (which surprisingly turned out to be a fine decision 😉 ).

I downloaded my boarding passes from the app to my Google Wallet and was good to go. Then there was nothing to do but chill and wait. Our new incoming flight was going to land in 30 minutes.

I’d seen a sign when I entered the airport that said it’s a quiet airport so there are no announcements – very nice! I had wondered why I enjoyed this airport even when I thought we were going to be basically spending the day there and I think it being “quiet” is part of it.

Besides the abundance of windows and comfort of the seats in the airport, there were also TVs everywhere with updated info and the gate TVs even had what the next four flights will be that leave from that gate. Very nice!

THE JOURNEY

Boarding

Curiously, the time for boarding came and went. I had seen the plane pull up to the gate and let off its passengers, but we were just sitting there at a gate that was labeled as “Closed.” There was no one at the gate either.

I checked all of my email and text updates to make sure I was in the right place. Once again I wish there was a little more human interaction just so we knew what was going on 🙂 . This airport is run by robots or something I guess.

25 minutes before the time we were supposed to be in the air, someone with a scarf indicating that they work for another airline (based on me asking a question to someone who was wearing the same type of scarf earlier that day) went up to the gate agent stand. They then started calling names to approach the gate. Alrighty then.

While that was happening, people started lining up in a weird clump similar to our IcelandAir flight from Boston. I was curious if we would board the same way, which was all at once.

At that point there was an announcement saying to remain seated…and we were the only ones that did that lol. Minutes later, the employee said everyone can board. So I guess everyone else was smarter not to listen to the rules. It’s all about incentives 😉 .

After we got to the front of the line, we scanned our boarding passes and walked through the jet bridge to the plane.

The Flight

We boarded the plane and found our seats. Of course it was in front of and next to crying babies. No worries – I whipped out my Soundcore Space One noise cancelling headphones so it was all good.

My Partner sat in his assigned middle seat, but then we discovered – there was no one assigned to our aisle seat! So he moved there and put his stuff in the middle seat. This was a great development because I discovered that the middle seats in this 3 by 3 plane configuration seem to have the TV components under the seat so it has less room for your legs and bag under there.

I settled into my window seat and 12 minutes after we were supposed to leave, there was an announcement that there was snow in Iceland so that’s why everything was delayed (doesn’t it snow there often?…) But whatever. I was glad for some explanation and made a note that snow even in a place that seems to have snow a lot messes up flight plans.

They then played the security video and after I selected “Start” on my TV, there were almost 4 minutes of ads for things in Iceland including The Blue Lagoon.

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After those ads were over I was able to watch TV. I went through the entertainment options and decided to make fun of Aquaman 2 (after I enjoyed the first one minus the horrendous dialogue). And spoiler: This sequel was as horrible as I feared.

While I was struggling through that movie, my Partner paid €12 for WiFi to do work. Then the drink service started and I noticed in the menu that they had special holiday drink options, which was cool to see.

About an hour before landing, the FAs came around with water and I had finished my bad movie and started reading a book. Then we approached Iceland, which was beautiful as always and even more dramatic because of the snow covering its black sand.

Once we landed and arrived at the gate, we were let off the plane quickly and ended up having about the same 1.5 hour transfer time that was originally planned. Nice!

Reykjavík–Keflavík (KEF) Airport

There was a TV next to the gate that said what gate we were going to next. This was nice since usually at KEF, they don’t tell you your gate until soon before boarding, but I guess that might be different for international transfers outside the Schengen area. We were at D gates so we started heading there.

Passport Control

We then saw signs for “Passport Control for D gates,” which split into two lines: one for EU Passports and one for Other Passports. So we headed to “Other” and there was only one family in line before us. There wasn’t anyone in the EU line so the employees there were waving people over from our line.

We were gestured forward and we provided our passports. The employee asked where we entered the EU and we said Iceland 2.5 months ago. She was so nice and in response to this timeline said “good job” 🙂 and then told us to have a great day. That might have been my friendliest border crossing experience ever.

We then went to our gate and it looked like there might be construction in the D gates because there was basically no seating at all. However, we found a food court nearby that allowed me to see the gate. And then drilling noises started, confirming construction was indeed underway. I hope they’re adding seats for people.

I settled in with my laptop for a second to hop on the free Wifi while my Partner tucked into an Icelandic hot dog.

The Gate

Our boarding passes said boarding would start at 4:40pm, but at that time, I was tracking our inbound plane on FlightAware and it had only just landed. However, people were lining up already all the way down the cooridor in front of our gate so we decided to join. I was impressed that it was a line and not a glob!

While we waited, it looked like someone was having a medical emergency. There were a few cars with flashing lights right outside including an ambulance, and employees took a stretcher past the gate entrance. Soon after, someone was wheeled out on it. I hope they’re ok!

At 5pm there was an announcement that we were boarding, but it was hard to hear over the construction. Then an employee went down our line to check our boarding passes and passports.

THE JOURNEY PT II

Boarding

At 5:13pm the line started moving with Economy on the right side of the gate and priority on the left. At the front of the line we scanned our own boarding passes and walked past the employee who had previously checked our passports and seemed to remember us all individually. That’s impressive.

We then went up an escalator onto the jet bridge and onto plane. No bus needed like our last time flying out of KEF.

The Flight

We got on the plane and were greeted by one of our FAs from the last flight, who was not the friendliest. They didn’t help direct us to which aisle we needed to go to and my Partner almost went down the wrong aisle. I helped him and we went through the far row towards our seats.

We got in our seats and saw that a pillow with a scratchy cover had been placed in each of our seats and that there was no blanket like we got on our flight here, but I get it – we’re delayed so I chose to be grateful I got a pillow 🙂 .

The seats on this jumbo jet seemed smaller than on the smaller plane we just came from, but according to Google Flights they’re the same average seat pitch of 31″. Alrighty then. However, the side of this plane in the window seat has a lip that does cut into my under-seat space a little.

Also, the aisle seats on the sides of the plane have the TV components under them so there’s way less room like I mentioned in my review on the flight from Boston (it’s the same plane 😉 ). In fact, my Partner couldn’t fit his backpack under there, but it wasn’t a huge deal. He just put it above us in a bin.

Once we were settled, the safety video came on and at the time we were supposed to take off, I got an email that we were delayed. Obviously I knew that since we were not in the air, but I appreciate the updates 🙂 .

I then opened my entertainment system, and had to watch about 4 minutes of ads and I paid attention to make sure I clicked my screen when the ads were done so I didn’t get stuck in an ad loop like on my flight from Boston. Success!

However, I was surprised to notice that the TV on this jumbo jet was way smaller than the one on the smaller plane we just came from. There was also the exact same movie selection on this much longer flight, which I was surprised by. Maybe I’m just used to the hundreds of options on Singapore Air, but the pickings were a bit slim.

I settled on rewatching the lovely Ocean’s 11 (2001) and preparing myself to look out for the Northern Lights, which my Mom had seen while flying back from our European adventures.

We took off and about an hour after takeoff, the FAs started the drink service. And I’m sad to say I didn’t see any Northern Lights. However, we chased the sunset for most of the flight, which was really cool to see. 6 hours of sunset 🙂 .

I then did some writing for this very blog and FAs came around with water. Then there was another drink service about 2 hours before landing.

At this time my Partner ordered and paid for a €9.50 sandwich and the FA said they had to go to the back to get it and would return soon…but they didn’t 🙂 . After about 30 minutes, I looked back and saw the FAs were talking in the galley and didn’t seem busy, so I suggested my Partner press his call button, which is on the TV screen in this jumbo jet.

The FA came over right away and after we explained the situation, they were very apologetic and said they would really be right back this time. They came back immediately and said there was a miscommunication and the sandwich my Partner had already paid for wasn’t available. So they offered two other options that I noticed were smaller than the one he ordered – and no refund or anything else was offered 🙂 . The FA was very kind about it, but our first food experience on IcelandAir was not very encouraging.

Anyway, we went back to chilling and finally landed in NYC about an hour after our scheduled time. At this point I wasn’t sure if we would make our Amtrak train that I had scheduled for 3 hours after the time our flight was supposed to hand. It was the last train of the night and would now would be leaving in 2 hours. Let’s see what happens!

JFK Airport

We got off the plane and headed towards customs.

Customs & Border Control

After a short walk we approached customs, which split into two lines based on passports and then multiple lines including Global Entry. There was an employee at the entrance that gestured us through and there was no line.

We approached a kiosk, scanned our faces and it said go talk to a border control employee. We were waved over immediately, handed them our passports and then were asked if we had anything to declare. My Partner has been declaring his snacks instead of eating all of them like I do on international flights lately, and they have yet to care about some processed nuts and snacks so that’s good to know! We then went through to baggage claim.

Baggage Claim

This baggage claim carousel was very close by, which I appreciated. The carousel started moving almost immediately, but it took 23 minutes for my Partner’s bags to come out.

We’d been on two planes that day and when my partner got his checked bags, they both looked like they’d been through the ringer. One was a little wet and both had scratches and small scrapes all over them.

I don’t know what happened out there, but I wanted to make a note of it, especially since my backpack was wet when I picked it up after our last IcelandAir flight. Something might be going on with their baggage handling practices, but it was a hectic day so we moved past it.