Reykjavik Connecting

If the ten-hour stretch is between, say, 11 pm and 9 am, there isn't much at the airport and only a few small hotels nearby (this might have changed in the last year). If your layover is over the course of a day, there are many buses that go directly to the Blue Lagoon, which is a very nice, if pricey, way to spend a few hours, especially if you're just coming off a cramped flight. You could also get a bus into Reykjavik (there are direct taxi services but they are crazy expensive) and spend half a day there. My experience, at least, arriving at Keflavik around 6 am was that I practically blinked and missed immigration, and if you have nothing to declare, you just walk past customs. Provided you gave yourself enough time to get back to the airport and go through security again, I don't think you'd find leaving and returning to the airport a problem.

Hope this helps!
Caroline

The tight connections are doable - it's a tiny airport so the 1.5 hour connection is just fine on Iceland Air (they have experience with this). Have you also considered their layover in Iceland? I did it once and it was the highlight of my trip (to Germany).

1.5 hours is long for a connection there, usually they're around 40-50 mins. Connections are usually doable in even less than that. My plane was late and we had 20 mins and everyone made it just fine. Airport is small and easy peasy.

As above -- it's a small airport and they connect many flights in an hour or so. A bonus is that when you go through immigration at Keflavik you've entered the Schengen area, so you'll have no formalities in Amsterdam -- like being on a domestic flight.

With ten daytime hours I'd go either to the nearby Blue Lagoon or into Reykjavik, leaving plenty of time to make my flight on to the continent.

We just spent three days in Iceland, coming home yesterday. The country has amazing mountains, glaciers, waterfalls, rivers and hot springs. If possible you should consider a stay rather than just a connection.

Others are correct; the airport is fairly small so you should have plenty of time to make connections. There are a couple of stores to browse in which are interesting (namely, the Icelandic gift stores) but not many.

What I did not like about the airport was the lack of seating. There just aren't enough seats for the amount of passengers in the common areas, nor near the gates. The air traffic controllers were striking yesterday causing many, many delays so people were filling every seat and sitting on the cold laminate floors. We arrived at the airport plenty early (2.5 hours before our flight) and then found out about the delays. In total we were there 4.5 hours before taking off and I believe they must have left our luggage sitting in the steady rain that whole time. Everything in our suitcases was quite wet. What a lot of work to deal with that when we arrived home! Not impressed with airport operations.

One caveat, from our friends' experience yesterday. Due to illness abroad they had to rebook their plans and fly back from Oslo early, still on Iceland Air, and missing their planned time there. They ran into the end of the job action, and there were still massive problems yesterday. Their flight from Oslo ran late. And yes, their plane to the US was held up for this flight to get in, and they (and others) were indeed rushed through and made their flight. But their luggage did not make the transfer, and they were not the only ones on the flight with this issue. It seems a to me that a bit more patience on the part of Icelandair in getting the US flight out would have saved them a lot of shipping costs to deliver the delayed lugged around the northeast US (came in Newark).

We had a connection in Iceland years ago and I was concerned about making our flight. The airport is very small; I think 1.5 hours is plenty of time.

We recently flew US-Paris via Reykjavik, and the connection on each end took much less than an hour. And it sounds like Icelandair must have a problem with luggage. Mine going over spent the night in Iceland, and because I was moving around at the start of our trip, they had to ship it to Southwestern France (from Paris) where I got it 5 days later, and then eventually paid me $100 because I was w/o my luggage for more than 24 hours.

My last 4 times with Iceland Air, only had between 40-50 min. layover. Totally normal and doable. With 1.5 hours, you will have plenty of time to check out their gift shop.

Resurrecting the thread to ask:

We will be connecting in Keflavik between Boston & Brussels. 75 minute connection.

Do we collect our luggage in Keflavik, do customs & then re-check bags to Brussels, or will it be passport control only? Or will we do passport control in Brussels?

@Motorgirl.... Reykjavik will be passport control only. You will collect your bags in Brussels, and will bypass passport control there.

We love flying IcelandAir - just don't forget headphones and food for the plane - neither is free on IcelandAir.

Thank you - perfect info for us!

We will get headphones and some food & drink free in Economy Comfort, but we will probably bring some snacks and our own earbuds along anyway.
The Icelandair earbuds are super uncomfortable for my ears but they come in the best little zippered box which I use for my own earbuds here at home.

One week to go!!

I just went through there on the way to London and I can tell you that as a fellow Bostonian that the airport is about the size of Providence so it is very easy to get gate to gate