Icelandic budget carrier Wow Air will start a seasonal route to Vancouver in 2019.

Flights between Reykjavik and Canada’s West Coast will operate daily (except Sunday) between June 6 and (a date to be announced) in October.

The news follows revelations last week that Wow Air will be cancelling a number of US routes in the weeks and months ahead.

Has Wow Air over-expanded?

Wow Air now poised to axe New York JFK and Dallas?

Healthy demand has to be good news for long-haul budget airlines, which need very high load factors to turn a profit, especially with rising fuel costs.

Hence why Wow Air is reducing some underperforming US services and why Norwegian will be axing Singapore in favour of Rio de Janeiro (where the yield or revenue is higher).

As a sixth-freedom airline Wow Air will be promoting its Vancouver service throughout the UK/mainland Europe and India. Its network is designed around travellers connecting from East to West via Iceland.

But the connection times at Reykjavik may not suit everyone.

Maybe that is why Wow Air’s UK office informs the press of the outbound schedules (to Vancouver via Reykjavik) from London Gatwick but not the return.

There’s a good reason for that. On the way out passengers departing Gatwick have a connection time in Reykjavik of three hours 25 minutes. But on the return from Vancouver UK-bound travellers must hang around for five hours 45 minutes. And that’s not much fun after an overnight flight.

Reykjavik-Vancouver schedules:

  • WW245 departs Reykjavik 1720, arrives into Vancouver 1815
  • WW226 departs Vancouver 1930, arrives into Reykjavik 1005 the following day

wowair.co.uk