Bringing in an average of 2.2 million international tourists in a given year, the Nordic nation of Iceland continues to see sustained popularity as a tourist destination for travelers from the U.S. and Canada.
National flag carrier Icelandair recently announced plans to start a new route to Reykjavik from St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL) in Missouri in May 2027 while Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines runs one flight to the Icelandic capital from New York’s JFK as well as what at the end of the summer was initially planned to be three seasonal routes from Minneapolis-St. Paul, Boston and Detroit.
As has just been reported by aviation website Simple Flying, the carrier is no longer bringing back the flight from Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW) to Keflavík Airport (KEF) for the 2027 summer season.
Delta Air Lines not bringing back Detroit-Reykjavik route for 2027 summer season: Report
The roughly six-hour flight between the two cities was taken over from Icelandair in May 2023 and ran on a Boeing 757-200 plane in July and August for the last three years. For a short period in 2022, both Icelandair and Delta offered direct flights between Reykjavik and Detroit.
It was always a seasonal flight that ran only during the peak tourist period in the summer but, now, is being retired as the airline prepares to launch a new Boston-Reykjavik flight on the same type of aircraft to run between April and October 2027. Delta has not officially confirmed the retirement of the route
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According to Simple Flying’s number-crunching, Delta transported 109,122 round-trip passengers between Detroit and Reykjavik during the last three seasons.
The 79.5% load factor is high for this type of seasonal route but it still fell victim to cuts that most likely come down to streamlining the airline’s network given that Delta will continue to run a flight from the Midwest out of Minneapolis-St. Paul.
“Delta’s history in Iceland dates back to June 2011”: Airline on its future flight plans for the Nordic country
“Delta’s history in Iceland dates back to June 2011, when the airline launched nonstop service between New York-JFK and Reykjavík (KEF), marking the first time a U.S. carrier offered scheduled nonstop flights to Iceland,” the airline said when announcing the new Boston-Reykjavik route earlier this month. “Delta’s new Boston service builds on that legacy, expanding access to one of the North Atlantic’s most sought-after destinations while offering New England travelers a convenient new gateway to Iceland.”
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The retirement of the Iceland flight also suggests that Delta may be slowly phasing out the 168-seat Boeing 757-200 plane that the airline has had as part of its fleet since the 1980s.
The only two transatlantic routes for which Delta currently uses this type of aircraft are the flights to Reykjavik from Minneapolis and, soon, Boston. For the flight from JFK, the larger Boeing 767-300ER plane is used but the flight is still run seasonally until mid-autumn when Iceland typically gets too cold for most travelers.
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