“Did you know they charge for water?” my friend asked after we disembarked the aircraft at Keflavik airport.

That sentence pretty much sums up the WOW Air experience. It’s WOW, all right. But, in the opposite of the good way. And they went out of business a year before the pandemic, which should also tell you all you need to know about their business accumen. Seeing as they were the only airline flying nonstop between SFO and Reykjavik at the time of our trip, we were willing to endure whatever this airline threw at us in order to enjoy Iceland.

I’m sort of surprised that WOW Air comes with such a brilliant pink color scheme. Not because of the choice of decor, but because the paint actually costs a lot more than you might think. Like, hundreds of thousands of dollars per plane. Anyway, this pinkish hue was a mainstay on all of their aircraft. As a low cost carrier, they actually still have a couple of features above, say, Ryanair. The first is that the seats actually have a holder for the safety placard and a magazine for food and other buy-on-board items. Ryanair prints safety instructions on the plastic of the seat in front of you in order to cut that cost. There’s also a small pouch of netting where you can store objects, which Ryanair doesn’t have either. Lastly, there are actually 110V power plugs between the seats. I found this particularly surprising, since this is a free utility that I haven’t seen on any narrowbody LCC planes. That’s where the frills end, however. Instead of padding, the seats just have a stretchy covering over the hard metal exterior. They recline, but not by much. And if you’re like us and were too cheap to pick your seats, you’ll be randomly assigned somewhere. On the flight back, where the next picture was taken, you’ll see that I lucked into an empty pair of seats. This made it a bit more comfortable to work on an essay I had due the next afternoon. For sleeping, I found that I was able to use a jacket and scarf to provide enough padding against the seat that I was able to fall asleep. I would recommend bringing something soft onboard to help yourself if you plan to sleep as well. Anything (including water, apparently) for eating or drinking onboard costs money, and the crew will be happy to assist you in emptying your pockets. Eat ahead of your flight and don’t forget the water bottles!

However, WOW Air wasn’t all shambles for one major reason. And that’s the scenery enroute to Iceland, and departing from Keflavik airport. Because the eastbound flight is a redeye, you’ll get a gorgeous sunrise about halfway through the flight, somewhere above northern Canada. After that you’ll pass straight over Greenland, which is probably the only way I’ll see it myself. The endless expanse of the ice sheet and its lakes simply glued me to the window all the way over that peninsula. Departing from Keflavik were amazing views of the Snaefellsjokull peninsula that we’d been on the previous day, and I was surprised by how flat the mountain we’d driven up on was. Since our return flight was westbound as well, we paced with the sunset and it dragged into a wonderful, calming display of candlelight-like glow. I love that no matter what airline or cabin class you’re flying in, you always have access to the wonderful views like these just outside the window. 

So, in short, flying WOW Air to Iceland was bearable and it was more than worth it for the wonderful trip we had! A lot of passengers avoid LCCs for being cheap and having a shoddy reputation, but the fact is that any of these major carriers are actually as safe as can be and running on time is usually also in their repertoire, given that they’re otherwise grasping at straws for how to differentiate themselves. I can’t say I miss the airline itself, but I do miss the downward pressure they put on airfare to Iceland. Before they collapsed you could find roundtrips to Iceland regularly for $300, and to their European destinations for $400-500 roundtrip. With only Icelandair in the market, the Iceland nonstop fares jumped to $900 roundtrip, while the Europe fares still stayed low due to other competition in that market. Of course, no one knows what pricing will look like once travel restrictions due to the pandemic ease up. At that point, each traveler will just have to decide for themselves the price that they’re willing to pay. And the remaining airlines will adjust their prices accordingly.