Before I begin this trip report, I’d like to apologise if the pictures seem to have poor quality or sizing. This is due to a bug with Discourse not allowing me to upload pictures even if they are perfectly sized like I’ve been doing for the past few months after another glitch occurred. If you are experiencing this, let me know in the comments and without further to do, let’s get into it!
Also Happy Easter for those celebrating! 
Good afternoon from a shockingly not all that cold Reykjavik, Iceland! 
where I had an amazing time in the few days I had in the city but more importantly had an AMAZING time out in the arctic region although I’d say Antarctica 
was slightly better because we were actually able to interact with the wildlife there although I’m not sure an interaction between me and a POLAR BEAR 
would’ve been any friendly compared to the penguins 
of the south. Another thing I also expected but didn’t get maybe for the best was the cold weather, Iceland is very far north as the northern tips of the country pass the arctic circle. Another region I had the privilege of passing by was the Faroe Islands 
a Danish territory just a bit directly north of the UK 
its also pretty nice and can’t wait to check it out in more detail one day along with the rest of Iceland and even Greenland! 
My way back home to South Florida 
will be pretty simple just involving 1 simple but long flight back on Icelandair’s Boeing 757-200 from Keflavik Airport to Orlando 
then taking the brightline not all throat high speed rail to Palm Beach I’m glad you’ll be joining me on this flight back home and off we go to KEF. Icelandair and their main rival PLAY are the biggest airlines here in Keflavik and the FI check in lines weren’t as bad although this is a peek hour, it’s because mainly people CONNECT onwards and don’t fly to KEF and just use it as a stopover point. I didn’t just to seem different, and mainly because the arctic cruises leaving from here were much quicker and cheaper. This made dropping off BOTH my checked bags going through security pretty easy. KEF has 3 concourses A, C and D, the former 2 are used for destinations within the Schengen Area which is just essentially every country of the European Union 
besides Cyprus 
and Ireland 
while concourse D the one we are in houses the NON Schengen destinations meaning we will have to go through passport control 
which didn’t take long at all. Once I entered the concourse, the crowds showed up as passengers arriving from Europe and making their way to their next flights to North America and one thing I noticed is a tiny market providing food along with the length of the flights. This is a pretty good way to convince people to buy some food as you DON’T GET ANY food for free either on Icelandair or PLAY. For starters, PLAY is an ultra low cost carrier so free food is out the window while Icelandair is a HYBRID carrier which provides some full service carrier benefits but also doesn’t provide some like a low cost carrier and don’t expect everything in the market to be cheap because it was pretty far from that, I’d say a plastic water bottle in the magic kingdom even with a Mickey Mouse paper wrap would be cheaper than a bottle of water here. I wasn’t going to buy something here as I’ll just pay up for something on the buy on board menu once we’re in the air. But I gotta admit, this is a good way to make money I saw this German couple who came in from Berlin and are on our connecting flight to MCO and looked at the board seeing 7 hours and 30 minutes and their faces were just dripping in SWEAT 
eventually it was time to make our way to the gate for our flight well not really as we had a BUS gate today like we did on our arrival last week but hey, I don’t mind boarding through stairs at all and I find it more fun than using a generic jet bridge.
FLIGHT INFO:
Origin: Keflavik (BIKF)
Destination: Orlando Intl 
(KMCO)
Flight Time: 7:17
Boeing 757-200 (Icelandair)
Server: Expert
You may remember that my inbound flight from Orlando
was swapped from a Boeing 737MAX8 to a much older but better Boeing 757-200, well it looks like for the time being the B752 is going to be flying between KEF and MCO so I’ll be back on one for the flight back, TF-FIK to be specific a 25 year old Boeing B757-200 which has quite the history, it was initially delivered to Iberia in December 1999, then passed onto Atlasjet in October 2008 then Saudia a month later before going back to Atlasjet in January 2010 before it went BACK to Saudia in October of the same year before Atlasjet took it back in December before new years 2011 its final operate was I-Fly from April 2011 to March 2015 where it came into service at Icelandair. Although a small reason why I booked this trip was to try a B38M on a long haul flight, the B752 is getting increasingly rare on these long hops so it was definitely nice as an aviation enthusiast to get it done before they were gone forever!
This Boeing 757-200 has the same configuration as the one I came into Reykjavik on having 184 seats in total so I won’t really go into specifics again, my seat for this 7 and a half hour transatlantic flight to the land of the mouse will be 28F which I didn’t find anything on. I didn’t mind this because this was a day time flight but I could see some complaining as this is flight is slightly longer than the flight to KEF. Other than that, the seat is pretty much the exact same as it was on my flight here so let’s just pushback and taxi out to KEFs runway 19 for take off!
Crosswinds plagued RWY 19 which isn’t ideal in ANY situation especially if your on a Boeing 757 but these pilots handled it PERFECTLY! Well done
After our western departure from Iceland
we have made it to our cruising altitude of 32,000ft just south of Greenland over the North Atlantic and around now is when the crew began the service, while food isn’t free soft drinks are in which I got a Pepsi. Like I said on the ground, I was actually going to pay up for something to eat on board and I got a Pizza Margherita for 1,150 Icelandic Krónas or around $9 USD. I really enjoyed this pizza 
while it wasn’t in flight lunch I’ve ever had. I still think I was better off buying this on board and receiving a FREE drink compared to buying both FOOD and DRINKS in that market back at Keflavik Airport. The crew I had were in a really good mood as well especially one girl named Sophie, she said that out of her 5 years of working at Icelandair, she’s had never been assigned the MCO flight and has always wanted to go to Disney World and now she finally got the chance, I guess any flight coming from or to MCO has the passengers and crews dreams come true, 5 stars! 
this aircraft is also equipped with the same entertainment system as my previous one which I also won’t go into again, but a good thing to note is that it is 100% FREE. Some other hybrid carriers like FlyDubai or Condor actually CHARGE you to use it so this definitely gives Icelandair a big advantage especially over its low cost competitor PLAY. I didn’t really use the IFE system a whole lot mainly because my seat mates who were that German couple from the market back in KEF invited me to play UNO with them for a good chuck of the day time portion of the flight and I haven’t played in some time so I decided to play with them and even asked them what they’ll be doing in Orlando besides Disney and they told me they’d also be going to Universal, Sea World and AQUATICA it’s nice to see the other theme parks get some love to, Orlando isn’t just Disney.
After an hour or 2 and only one victory, the sun began to set
over Newfoundland, Canada 
and it was around this time that we stopped playing as we all got bored and they wanted to watch this one movie simultaneously which I think is pretty cool. As the entertainment out the window is closely coming to an end, it’s time to find something to watch on the entertainment, I’m not a big Family Guy fanatic but I do watch the show from time to time and do sometimes get a laugh for a few hours but one show I’m yet to watch is the Cleveland Show, a short lived spin off and since I tried something different with Oppenheimer last time, let’s do something different tonight!
After a few episodes, the sun has fully gone down and we were still above Canada
but this time over the province of Nova Scotia just a bit west of Halifax and on the topic of Halifax, my seat mates were watching Titanic and down there is a cemetery known for holding a lot of the victims of the disaster and just 2 days ago in 1912, she should’ve been docking in New York City 
but of course that didn’t happen but on a similar note, ocean liner transatlantic crossings are pretty rare as well and I gotta do that soon before it’s gone!
After passing Nova Scotia, it was pretty much out of the ordinary nothing to report out the window until 3 hours later when we began our descent into Orlando
we flew heading south towards the Caribbean before turning west directly towards the space coast flying over Sanford airport on left base and coming to land on RWY 18R and down below is the space coast home to NASA! 
Here we are on final for MCOs RWY 18R and out there you can see the not so thriving downtown Orlando. That’s a really big shame as there is SO MUCH potential but nobody really cares about as Disney Springs or Universal City Walk is pretty much downtown Orlando for everybody.
TOUCHDOWN! Welcome back to Orlando
and the end of a fantastic trip to Iceland and the Arctic region. Now was this the best transatlantic flight I’ve ever taken? No. Was it the most comfortable experience? No. But would I chose to fly Icelandair again? YES! For the price I say they have a pretty good product with good seats, entertainment and crews. Just note that food is an extra charge though. Could’ve this been less comfortable? Definitely but I think that the equipment swap changed that because let’s face it, I think we’d all prefer a 7 hour flight on a Boeing 757-200 than a Boeing 737MAX8 aviation enthusiast or not. 
that doesn’t mean that I won’t be flying a B38M long haul though, oh no I’m planning to go to Kigali, Rwanda 
in July and the segment to Kigali will be on a 6 and a half hour flight on one of Turkish Airline’s MAX8s but I’m pretty sure that’ll be a more comfortable experience than Icelandairs.
Here we are, welcome back to Orlando International Airport’s relatively new terminal C which is a HUGE upgrade to the old main terminals, bravo MCO!
immigration took no time at all! Thanks to both global entry but also that we were the ONLY international flight in the terminal right now. It isn’t exactly a win win as our bags did take some time to come out but once they came out, I made my way across to the MCO Brightline station and hopped on the train back to Palm Beach!
That will be it regarding my flight on Icelandair’s Boeing 757-200 in economy class from Reykjavik, Iceland to Orlando so thank you for joking me on this, stay tuned for May as we return to a familiar South American country visiting not only its largest city but its under visited capital and as always between now and the next time, see you in the sky! 
