Was just checking on flightradar24.com and it seems that Icelandair cancelled ALL of their flights (except maybe JFK) today from KEF to all its North American points. The flights from Europe - that make up the flights to North America - all arrived more or less on time. Does anybody know what these flights were cancelled? weather?

Big storm in Iceland now. Winds are around 45-50 knots. Passengers coming in from the European flights can't disembark the planes.

The weather is pretty bad. More info here https://www.isavia.is/en/keflavik-airport

These are all planes that have landed but can't disembark cause they can't use the jetbridges and stairs in winds that high.

oh wow - thanks for the quick replies!!

I do hope that Isavia try to figure out a way to get bridges and stairs that can safely handle weather conditions such as these. This is the third or fourth time this has happened this year.

akb88 wrote:

I do hope that Isavia try to figure out a way to get bridges and stairs that can safely handle weather conditions such as these. This is the third or fourth time this has happened this year.

With wind up to 166KM/100 MPH... not many things can stay upright in those winds....

loonytoon44 wrote:

akb88 wrote:

I do hope that Isavia try to figure out a way to get bridges and stairs that can safely handle weather conditions such as these. This is the third or fourth time this has happened this year.

With wind up to 166KM/100 MPH... not many things can stay upright in those winds....

Well the winds aren't that high. 40-55 mph right now

All Outbound flights at KEF currently are cancelled, two inbounds of WIZZ Air diverted to EGS, NEOS flight NO 923 just landed at KEF after more than 2 h.
Weather reasons?

Yup, weather

https://www.isavia.is/en/corporate/news ... ik-airport

Not even able to use jetbridges!!

Extreme weather conditions: https://www.isavia.is/en/corporate/news ... ik-airport

I may be wrong, but I think this may be from the Hurricane Lorenzo?

Anyone know if this is the remnants of a hurricane?


ILL

ilovelamp wrote:

Anyone know if this is the remnants of a hurricane?


ILL

No, the remnants of Hurricane Lorenzo impacted the UK and Ireland and continued to the northeast without impacting Iceland.

ilovelamp wrote:

Anyone know if this is the remnants of a hurricane?


ILL

Just regular autumn weather in Iceland

Can confirm. Just flew to the south of Iceland a few hours ago and hoo boy was it bumpy.

akb88 wrote:

loonytoon44 wrote:

akb88 wrote:

I do hope that Isavia try to figure out a way to get bridges and stairs that can safely handle weather conditions such as these. This is the third or fourth time this has happened this year.

With wind up to 166KM/100 MPH... not many things can stay upright in those winds....

Well the winds aren't that high. 40-55 mph right now

Winds are 55-60 kts and forecast to increase.

globalflyer wrote:

I may be wrong, but I think this may be from the Hurricane Lorenzo?

Parly

It appears that passengers on Wizz Air flight from Krakow that diverted to EGS were told to either, fly back to Krakow or waive their rights and figure out a way to get to the city on their own.

Does that make KEF unusable for an ETOPS alternate? If so how is that affecting the NAT tracks today?

I flew to KEF from JFK last December, early in the month. We landed at about 6am parked at the gate and not even a peep from the crew for the first 2 hours. Ill spare you the details of that horribly handled situation but we disembarked along with like 30 other flights at 1211pm

akb88 wrote:

I do hope that Isavia try to figure out a way to get bridges and stairs that can safely handle weather conditions such as these. This is the third or fourth time this has happened this year.

And ... it has happened all over the world.

There are wind limitations not just on ground equipment, but also on aircraft entry and cargo doors. The weather almost always has the last say.

I'm surprised planes were allowed to land there instead of being told to divert.

akb88 wrote:

It appears that passengers on Wizz Air flight from Krakow that diverted to EGS were told to either, fly back to Krakow or waive their rights and figure out a way to get to the city on their own.

Sounds reasonable. If Wizz chose to rent buses to KEF, then they might wait days or a week until buses were available. It's not like Wizz was the only or first airline to divert to EGS, and in a country that small the available resources are limited.

It's a 12 hr bus drive each way if weather doesn't interfere seriously.

And how would they accommodate the pax while waiting for a bus? In my country they could rent tents from military, but Iceland has no military. Forget about hotels for hundreds of people anywhere near EGS. Simply not there.

Just be happy that everybody landed safely and will have another chance from Krakow to KEF. That's much faster and much more comfortable.

The EGS town Egilstadir is mostly an Alcoa aluminum factory, and it has 2,306 inhabitants (yr 2016). In addition it is rather unique in Iceland for having a rather flat and non-volcanic area which quite easily was made into a diversion runway for the only international airport KEF. Being placed in the opposite end of the country it will most often have useable weather when KEF is closed.

prebennorholm wrote:

akb88 wrote:

It appears that passengers on Wizz Air flight from Krakow that diverted to EGS were told to either, fly back to Krakow or waive their rights and figure out a way to get to the city on their own.

Sounds reasonable. If Wizz chose to rent buses to KEF, then they might wait days or a week until buses were available. It's not like Wizz was the only or first airline to divert to EGS, and in a country that small the available resources are limited.

It's a 12 hr bus drive each way if weather doesn't interfere seriously.

And how would they accommodate the pax while waiting for a bus? In my country they could rent tents from military, but Iceland has no military. Forget about hotels for hundreds of people anywhere near EGS. Simply not there.

Just be happy that everybody landed safely and will have another chance from Krakow to KEF. That's much faster and much more comfortable.

The town Egilstadir is mostly an Alcoa aluminum factory, and it has 2,306 inhabitants (2016). In addition it is rather unique in Iceland for having a rather flat and non-volcanic area which quite easily could be made into a diversion runway for the only international airport KEF. Being placed in the opposite end of the country it will most often have useable weather when KEF is closed.

Lol...I'm Icelandic and I've been to EGS several times lol. The media here has made a bit of a fuss over this, or tried to at least, we'll see how it works out in the next few days. Locals on the flight have pretty much emptied out all car rentals in the area to get back to their homes.

akb88 wrote:

Lol...I'm Icelandic and I've been to EGS several times lol. The media here has made a bit of a fuss over this, or tried to at least, we'll see how it works out in the next few days. Locals on the flight have pretty much emptied out all car rentals in the area to get back to their homes.

Yeah, I can imagine that. Good times for car rentals in Egilstadir. I'm not Icelandic, but at least we shared the same king until 1944, and I have visited your country roughly forty times. And had luck never to be diverted to Egilstadir. Should have been back on Monday, but yesterday it was postponed a week or two.

NWADTWE16 wrote:

I flew to KEF from JFK last December, early in the month. We landed at about 6am parked at the gate and not even a peep from the crew for the first 2 hours. Ill spare you the details of that horribly handled situation but we disembarked along with like 30 other flights at 1211pm

Wait, give us the details. You landed but were stuck on the plane an additional 6 hours, which is longer than JFK-KEF. Why? Weather issues? And the crew didn’t give any reasoning as to why to passengers?

aemoreira1981 wrote:

I'm surprised planes were allowed to land there instead of being told to divert.

This is the problem with Keflavik - divert where? Egilsstadir is a challenging airport in itself for pilots with very few parking stands, terrain and instrument approach at only one end, and it’s also a many hour coach journey back to Reykjavik for passengers. Reykjavik City is too small for transatlantic aircraft, and that’s kind of it.

In my own experience of operating to Keflavik from London we’d often take fuel to divert back to Glasgow in case the weather was bad in Keflavik, however that would add just as much delay to the passengers as waiting a few hours to be able to open the doors...

Does anyone know how long it took to get people off the airplanes? It looks like Keflavik had no departures for over 12 hours. Quite fascinating impact from winds. It is truly amazing that these 757s could land in the conditions, yet were stuck since the rest of the infrastructure at airport couldn’t handle the wind