Iceland - FF possible ??
 

I'd love to go BUT it looks like I won't earn any FF! The best I could find was BA FF but only at 25%. Is there a way to obtain FF on other airlines?

1. 25% is not 0%. :)

2. The one-way distance LGW-KEF is 1200 miles, and you'll earn 300 miles with BA. So roundtrip you'll lose at most 2400 miles (and only 1800 miles). (Remember, you can get to London any way you want using miles. BA's LGW-KEF flight leaves from Gatwick early morning, so you can't connect to it same-day anyhow from any flight from the US I can think of, especially since many flights from the US come into Heathrow instead.)

3. There's a complete list of airlines serving KEF at the airport's website (airlines page):

http://www.keflavikairport.com/airlines.html

It lists several airlines (including Swiss and SAS) which partner with SOME alliance (OW is the only alliance I'm currently using, so all I know is that only BA is there from OW, I don't know all the members of *A and SkyTeam offhand). Research their earning partners to see if any of them would work better for you than BA (after getting to London some other way that does get you full FF).

Icelandair is (or used to be) a partner in Scandinavian's EuroBonus.

I flew to Iceland on an award on TWA's frequent flyer program. That's been gone for several years, though.

SagaBonus
 

I know this'll probably invite scorn, but Icelandair actually has its own FF program, SagaBonus, so you can join that and earn 100% miles. Granted, the miles will only be useable on Icelandair, but they're still miles and it's still 100%.

They used to be partnered with SAS but that ended April this year. Currently they're only partnered with other Icelandic airlines, car rentals and hotels. I suspect they're looking for new partners, but who knows when/if that'll happen.

The one problem with Saga Bonus miles from FI is that they expire at the end of three years, even if you fly within that time and accumulate more miles. If the miles stayed put, I'd have more than enough to fly Business Class from LHR, but the miles keep dropping out..... :mad:

When booking some fares at icelandair.co.uk the T&Cs will claim that the fares aren't eligible for miles, but then they've always posted to my account after the trip :confused: :) - the same thing has happened with domestic Air Iceland flights. That makes up (a bit) for the miles stale-dating.

I'd never scorn anyone who had good things to say about Iceland, Knaldskalle!

icelandair miles on sas
 

I've flown Saga business class - it was nice! However, be aware when flying Icelandair and aquiring miles on SAS on certain routes. Don't know if they changed, but on the Icelandair site they claimed all flights would earn miles on SAS Eurobonus. Certain routes, however, do not (like from NYC). When I called them on this and inquired and pushed it with SAS, didn't matter. Never got the miles.

Thanks for your help; even though it does not help me decide if I go or not! Around 300€ and no FF points for an almost silver elite hurts :o

Really? I knew LGW was decently far from London's city center, but I didn't think it was THAT far away :D.

As far as I've understood, SAS would give EuroBonus miles for the part of the trip that goes KEF-CPH/CPH-KEF but not on the KEF-JFK part of your trip (since CPH-KEF-JFK is a direct competitor to SAS' CPH-EWR route) - but since they've terminated their partnership earlier this year I'm not sure that any of this is valid anymore.

Why, thank you! It's just that I'm still a newb here and Icelandair doesn't seem to have a forum here (they're probably not big enough to qualify for that) but I haven't even seen anyone mention Icelandair here at all, so I thought that perhaps they weren't comme-il-faut.

So use miles to go, instead. :)
USA-KEF for 40k (AA/etc) is a good deal with a stopover in Europe.

Austrian Airlines flies to Iceland from Vienna, or at least it used to. Check their website www.aua.com for the mileage etc. (They are StarAlliance Members)

The different London airports don't like each other, so they require the plane to circle around for 1200 miles before it can land at the other one. :)

(Thanks, I've fixed my typo in my previous post.)