Iceland-based low-cost carrier PLAY
has continued to tinker with its North American network, swapping aircraft and, thus, reducing its overall capacity on flights to the United States.
Aircraft swaps
As flagged by AeroRoutes, PLAY has swapped the Airbus A321neos, operating its flights from Keflavík International Airport (KEF) to Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) and New York Stewart International Airport
(SWF), for the A320neo, which has fewer (174 or 180 compared to 214) seats.
According to the site, the changes will be effective on flights to Baltimore/Washington from June until September and to New York Stewart from May 10, with some flights from that date still being operated with an A321neo.
In July, PLAY will only operate three daily flights to North America compared to five that it had in July 2024, which included a single Canadian destination, namely John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport (YHM). The map below displays the airline’s North American network in July 2024 and July 2025, respectively, using data from the aviation analytics company Cirium‘s Diio Mi airline planning tool.
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Fundamental change
PLAY tweaking its North American (which will turn into its US) network has now become the norm since October 2024. Back then, the Icelandic company announced that it was shifting away its emphasis from providing connecting flights from Europe to the US via Reykjavík–Keflavík, citing Iceland’s strengthening leisure market.
“The point-to-point part of PLAY’s schedule, primarily flights between Iceland and Southern Europe, has been popular and profitable from the beginning. However, as previously reported, the airline’s yields on its hub-and-spoke part of the business across the Atlantic has been disappointing, particularly in 2024.”
Photo: Vincenzo Pace | Simple Flying
PLAY added that the North American market had changed substantially, including a general increase in supply that negatively affected the low-cost carrier’s results. Reacting to the changing market dynamics, the airline cut back some of the capacity on its transatlantic routes, adding more flights from Iceland to Southern Europe.
At the time, Einar Örn Ólafsson, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of PLAY, said that since the establishment of the airline, it has observed significant market shifts, resulting in the carrier’s connecting network becoming less and less profitable.
“In short, we will focus on the aspects of our business that have proven both successful and profitable—namely, transporting passengers between Southern Europe and Iceland.”
Cirium’s Diio Mi showed that in 2024, the transatlantic (from Europe to Canada and the US) market’s capacity, measured in available seat kilometers (ASK), grew by 6.7%.
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PLAY cited an increased supply of seats on the transatlantic market, which negatively impacted demand for its hub-and-spoke model flights via Iceland.
Finding success
However, in contrast, Icelandair, which announced its Q4 2024 results on January 30, indicated that its North American revenues had slightly increased, growing from $773.4 million in 2023 to $802.8 million in 2024, with overall revenues growing from $1.52 billion to $1.57 billion.
Cirium’s Diio Mi data indicated that so far, Icelandair has only scheduled two additional flights to North America in July compared to the same month in 2024. Furthermore, throughout the US, Icelandair now has three partner airlines to expand its reach and potentially welcome more customers onboard its flights: 
Alaska Airlines
, JetBlue, and its most recent partner, 
Southwest Airlines
.
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