Solid September for PLAY...Icelandic airline starts new Liverpool service

Photo by Benjamin Suter on Unsplash

In September, one of Iceland's newest airlines, PLAY carried 92,181 passengers, a big decrease from August when the airline flew 109,956 people.  Load factor also dropped from nearly 87% in August to 81.5%. On-time performance (OTP) in September was 86%.

According to the airline, in Iceland, September is seen as a traditionally challenging month for airlines, due to a drop in demand for holidays, a new school year and a return to work for many. 

However, PLAY’s hub-and-spoke network has had a very positive effect on the business, including aircraft utilization and a decline in unit cost. 

New destinations & large hiring

This week PLAY is celebrating its inaugural flight to Liverpool John Lennon Airport.  PLAY will operate flights to Liverpool two times a week, on Mondays and Fridays. Passengers can now fly comfortably between Liverpool and PLAY’s four destinations in the U.S. as well as Iceland.

Welcome to Liverpool - Play's first service. Photo Play

Paul Winfield, Director of Aviation Development for Liverpool John Lennon Airport, said: "We’re delighted to welcome PLAY to Liverpool and to add Reykjavik as the latest destination to the Airport’s expanding route network. 

As well offering the region’s travellers an excellent low-cost airline product to Iceland and on to New York, Washington and Boston, this will also be another important link for the region’s visitor economy too, making it easy for Icelanders and Americans wanting to visit the Liverpool City Region, the North West and North Wales to fly to Liverpool."

Porto

On October 6, PLAY launched ticket sales to Porto in Portugal. Scheduled flights will begin in April 2023 and will be operated twice a week throughout October 2023. Porto is PLAY’s second destination in Portugal as PLAY offered direct flights twice a week between Iceland and Lisbon in 2022 and will continue to do so in 2023. This will be the first time that an airline offers scheduled direct flights between Iceland and Porto.

On September 1, PLAY announced a recruitment drive to fill 150 cabin crew positions and 55 flight crew positions for 2023 to support the company’s growth in the coming year. This received great interest and more than 3,000 applied for the positions. The selection process has already begun, and the first training courses are planned for December and will continue until June.

Photo Play

Birgir Jonsson, PLAY’S CEO:  "We are quite pleased with the respectable load factor we achieved in September as the month traditionally has low demand at the end of summer. Even though the winter months are always challenging for airlines and the economic situation in the world continues to be uncertain our sales over the past weeks have been strong after a somewhat slow start to the fall. We are therefore continuing with our plans of adding new destinations, aircraft and people for next year. The strength of our hub-and-spoke business model gives us the flexibility to move capacity between markets as demand fluctuates and it is this flexibility that gives us confidence for the coming months and the future performance of PLAY. The daily operation continues to be solid, our on-time performance is very impressive and the customer feedback regarding our services is overwhelmingly positive and complimentary.  These are some of the many  reasons why I‘m so proud of belonging to the great team of people at PLAY and why I‘m so very optimistic for the future."