Braniff

I am an Icelandair fan and have been a loyal customer for over twenty years. I am of course happy at their success. Hard to believe you can fly up to 16 times a day from Reykjavik to the US and Canada with them !

I am however very disillusioned about their hub at KEF. It was clearly designed for another age. The chaos of their departing gate area reminds most of bus stops in India! Priority boarding is an unknown concept. The Saga Lounge is normally overfilled when I am there. Security never has all lines open no matter how many people in line. Immigration is however wonderful - a rare example where a government law enforcement agency is the best service provider. Bus gates are becoming more and more common - perhaps to perfect the India metaphor ;-) And after the latest construction - not to expand capacity - but to redesign passenger flow in the terminal to make it mandatory to go through the shopping area does not give me hope.

This may well be common to many airports but they continually bombard you with notices that it was selected the best airport in the Europe. I find that very difficult to believe. KEF at non-peak hours is great but there are very few such hours. But that must be when the inspectors were invited....

UltraRant

AMS also announces big time that it has been elected 'Best airport in Europe'. In their case it's by SkyTrax, a reputable company. Awards by them actually do have quite a bit of value. Who did the election of KEF?

I do know that sometimes airlines and airports just organize their own election, in which they sort of are the only candidate. The most appalling example here is the 'world traveler award' or something among those lines, which was mainly organized by Widerře and Radisson, both company poodles of SAS. And guess what? SAS was elected 'Airline of the year'!

Braniff

I just looked this up. It's Airports Council International, which appears to be reputable. But clearly even more gullible !

BrennivinUSA

KEF is no longer the amazing pleasure it once was just a few years ago, but the new Loksins Bar is pretty nice (though I'm a bit biased!).

Agree 100% on immigration. KEF handles it better than any other airport in any country into which I have flown.

Secondary security, on flights to the USA, is also still a pleasure. The TSA could learn a few things.

Donna49

Definitely, KEF is not the convenient connection point it once was.

But the entire world now seems to want to visit Iceland. It is hard to believe the increase in passenger traffic the past few years. And the present facilities are clearly not capable of adequately servicing this increase.

A lot of folks feel the same way, as evidenced by the comments to this Grapevine article.

http://grapevine.is/mag/column-opini...t-renovations/

bjarki

A 20% increase in passenger numbers year after year is probably a bit hard for any airport to deal with but I think KEF was in many ways poorly designed to begin with and difficult to expand to meet this new demand. The media in Iceland has not been kind to Isavia, the airport operator, this summer as there have been constant stories about the crowds and chaos that can partially be blamed at incompetence on the part of Isavia. I know it is difficult to quickly expand the facilities but they have no excuse for going into this summer so poorly staffed which has lead to severe delays at the security screening. They say that the increase in passengers has surpassed all projections but that sounds like nonsense because the number of seats available is known pretty accurately for months in advance. Icelandair is not free from blame either as it seems that their ground operations were also poorly staffed and equipped to deal with the increase. Sadly, I do not see any immediate relief in sight. There are piecemeal expansions going on at different parts of the terminal that do not manage to keep up with the passenger numbers and do nothing to address the fundamental flaws of the airport, only adding some more bus gates. There is ongoing work on a new masterplan for the airport but it is in the early stages yet so I think there will several years until we see serious expansion/modification taking place. Why this process wasn't started at least 3-4 years ago is beyond my understanding. I know that Icelandair is quite annoyed at the lack of action on part of Isavia and the CEO of Icelandair Group has publicly commented that they did not rule out the option that Icelandair would simply build its own terminal at KEF from scratch.

Tim1975

Not mine, the country was bust 3 to 4 years ago.

Construction on a proper expansion has just started. Eventually they plan departures and arrivals to the on different levels at the front of the building rather than at different sides of the building and for the existing building to be extended outwards both east and west where the arrivals and departure sides of the building are currently (this has the advantage that construction can be largely airside and therefore quicker and cheaper) to provide two new wide piers with plenty of extra gates.

The non-Schengen South building will also be extended East and West, as I understand it original gate pier will loose all or most of its gates and become just a linking corridor between the North and South buildings.

They claim the upgrade will provide capacity for 9million pa.

There is also talk of a third runway.

bjarki

The design and planning phase isn't that expensive but it is does require time. They could well have been much farther along in that process at this point. The expansions that you mention are promising but still quite far from being "shovel-ready". I would be pleasantly surprised if any significant expansion will be done by 2020.

nanyang

Generally would agree with the negative sentiment re KEF. Also, I recall the check-in process was a bit of a mess when I flew KEF-JFK in Y last year - long queues etc.

Now, on the other hand, domestic flights tend to be very pleasant experiences in Iceland.

Braniff

Iceland has some of the best natural water in the world. I saw in the Icelandic media that KEF had removed all water drinking fountains and has only hot water running in the bathroom sinks. Apparently some travelers were using them instead of purchasing the exorbitantly priced water bottles at the airport.

This horrible airport only gets worse...

garethlewis

I was there yesterday and simply had a drink of water at the bar...

Braniff

Their strategy is already working: they got you to the bar ;-)

alpha031

I fully agree with Braniff that KEF has gone catastrophically downhill. Obviously, it was always a bit of a mess in the gate areas, with the lack of space and the unstructured boarding process, but the departure lounge used to be quite nice - relaxed, spacious and airy. I also liked the café they used to have over there.

But now, it's stuffed full of overpriced stores and mediocre bars and restaurants and there's no space anywhere to relax while waiting for your flight. The idea seems to be to squeeze as much money as possible out of the passenger at the expense of the quality of the passenger experience. It's slightly pathetic, really.

I can only imagine what sort of nightmare it will be to transit there with the projected increase in passenger numbers...

garethlewis

Haha! Well I didn't touch the booze I promise

tood6th

We went through KEF in October 2015. BOS to AMS was not bad but the return through KEF to BOS was a nut house. We flew Saga and planned on using the lounge but our flight from AMS got in late. We went to the gate because they said they were boarding. Let me back track. We first had to find the correct gate because they changed it three times. No Iceland Air personnel in evidence anywhere to ask. We are not risk takers so we waited at the gate, and waited, and waited. Then we waited in a hall to get on a bus. Then we waited on the bus to go to the plane, then we waited to get off the bus and then we waited on the plane while they found all their passengers and looked for passengers' lost items.I still have images of possible lost souls or items on the tarmac.

We are now planning to go to Zurich via KEF in May and I was wondering if there was any chatter about conditions at KEF. As of post in December it does not sound like anything has improved. Any encouraging words out there or are we crazy?