Hurry Up and Wait – And Wait Some More

This year’s vacation is to Switzerland and Prague. Julian has a thing for mountains, especially the Bernese Oberland of Switzerland. He made most of our reservations well in advance, including flights on Icelandair. We’d never flown this airline before, but friends have had a good experience with it.

We left Seattle on July 2 to Keflavik Airport, outside Reykjavik. It took 1/2 hour after we arrived to have someone behind the Icelandair check-in desks. Fortunately, it staffed all of the desks so the line moved quicker than usual. The flight was full, as one would expect in post-pandemic days. My long legs suffered on the short distance between seats. I normally don’t sleep much on flights, but this one was particularly unconducive to slumber. I remained vigilant to make sure the person in the seat ahead of me didn’t recline and finish off my kneecaps. To kill time, I finished a short novel. Julian had the window seat and had a better sleep experience, but not by much.

Keflavik Airport is a work in progress. Most of the gates don’t have attached jetways yet, so passengers board a shuttle bus to reach their planes. This must be a hot mess in winter, especially with passengers who can’t climb gangplanks. We landed and sprinted to the gate for the Zurich flight. It was boarding, so we hopped on the bus. The flight took off almost on time, with the seats less than half full. Miracle of miracles, we didn’t have anyone behind us so we could recline our seat backs with impunity.

Twenty minutes after we were airborne, the pilot announced that we were going back to Keflavik due to a technical issue with the plane. The airline had to scramble to fix or find a new plane and crew. Meanwhile, we were shuttled back to the airport and given very little information other than was what was on the monitors in the terminal. We were stuck at a gate with minimal seating. The flight was supposed to leave at 9:15 – didn’t happen. We finally got to board the shuttle an hour or so later. I was irked that the airline did nothing to make up for the inconvenience. The least they could have done was offer free food on the flight. (Icelandair doesn’t offer free meals, even on trans-Atlantic flights.) Luckily, we made it to Zurich without incident.

Stay tuned for updates on our exploits.