Flight Information
Airline: IcelandAir
Origin: Minneapolis/ Saint Paul International Airport
Destination: Keflavik International Airport
Date: March 31, 2023
Aircraft Type: B737 MAX 8
Aircraft Registration: TF-ICM
Flight Time: 5 hours, 32 minutes
For this trip report, I decided to bring out some pictures from my flight from Minneapolis to Iceland last Spring break. I have made a trip report (linked here) about the return leg, but I thought I’d share this trip, as our aircraft had totally different amenities… and it was all during a blizzard.
Our flight to Iceland was scheduled to leave at 7:25 PM on March 31st, 2023 as FI 656. We arrived at the airport around 4:30, where we met my grandparents, who were also coming on this trip, at the check in counter. Through discussion with the check in agent, I found out that Icelandair contract with a company (who the bag handlers and checkin/gate agents work for) who fill those jobs for airlines without a massive, constant presence (like, maybe 1 or two flights a day at MSP), notably Icelandair, Condor, KLM, and Air France.
After clearing security, we entered the main terminal area, and found our gate (H6). The weather was declining, and earlier that day, we had torrential freezing rain. Snow was forecast for the evening. I tracked our plane as it came on the KEF-MSP leg on FR24, watching it dodge some cells of ice storms to the north.
During this time, I found a couple of very kind Southwest pilots, trying to deadhead to Orlando and Chicago, respectively. We discussed the 737 MAX (which they crewed before the MAX groundings), which I was doing a school project on at the time.
Just a couple minutes behind schedule, our ride up to Iceland, TF-ICS, pulled into the gate. We boarded about 20 minutes late, and the captian urged us to get into our seats as fast as possible, to avoid the worst of the storm.
This is one of the only MAXs in Icelandair’s fleet without an IFE screen. Though the sticker on the seatback promised Wi-Fi, none was available on this aircraft.
The rain was starting to turn to snow and sleet, so we pushed as soon as we could.
We had to de-ice, of course, and waited about 20 minutes behind a whole row of other planes which had to do the exact same thing. I was shocked to find out that, in all her probably hundreds of flights from Minnesota, my grandma had never once before been de-iced, at least in her memory. Someone in the row behind me heard be talking about the special winglet on the MAX, so I ended up giving a mini-explanation of them to about 5 people while we waited.
After the aircraft was sprayed down, we taxied over to the runway and took off. By this point, it was a full on blizzard.
Almost instantly, we dived into the white out conditions. I took this photo maybe 20 seconds after rotation. The sounds of the gear being retracted were still audible.
After a fairly turbulent climb, we got up to our cruising altitude. Because of our routing, there really isn’t much to see in terms of towns and cities. We went straight north, then sort of curved around over Canada, crossed Greenland, the Atlantic, and then came into Iceland. I got this picture about 50 minutes into the flight, so probably near the Minnesota-Ontario border.
As we were treated to a beautiful sunrise over the empty (and cloudy) interior of Greenland, the cabin crew gave out a sort of breakfast-ish meal. It was just after midnight in Minneapolis, but about 6:00 AM in Keflavik, so I’ll just say it was an early morning snack. It was pretty OK, a little cup of Skyr (Icelandic yogurt), a bread roll, and some fruit. They also passed out some pretty nice sized bags of Scandinavian candy, called Djungelvrål. For what its worth, its a pretty tasty salty-sweet licorice gummy thing. If you’re wondering, Djungelvrål means “jungle roar” in Swedish.
Things got pretty bumpy on our approach through the clouds. The pilot gave a lengthy announcement about connecting flights to Europe, and which ones were delays and whatnot.
Hello, Iceland!
Welcome to Iceland! We landed on runway 1, pretty firmly, but I’ll give it to ‘em because we had a moderate crosswind. We’ve got a couple of PLAY A320neos parked off to the side as we pulled into our gate.
Icelandic customs is pretty smooth, and Keflavik Airport is quite nice. I didn’t sleep at all on our flight over, so I was exhausted.
We met my aunt and uncle in baggage claim, as they had landed around the same time from Seattle. Having planned ahead, the 21+ in our group purchased alcohol at duty free, because it is HEAVILY taxed when in Iceland, outside of the airport.
All in all, it was a very nice experience, minus the blizzard in Minneapolis, but that made it just pretty interesting.