LONDON – Icelandic carrier PLAY has announced it has handled over 100,000 passengers in the first six months of operations.
As a breakdown, the airline flew 101,053 passengers across more than 1,000 flights, offering a “satisfactory” load factor of 53.2% for the year.
Around 48% of that passenger count were traveling from Iceland itself.
Commenting on the news was Birgir Jonsson, the CEO of PLAY who reflected on what has been an eventful year for the carrier.
“As we close a very eventful first year of operations, we are very encouraged and full of energy for the coming year.”
“The business environment for all airlines has been challenging but we have been able to increase our market share and get PLAY into a very favorable market position to be able to enjoy the coming market growth, especially as we expand into the transatlantic market in the spring.”
“We have been operating in a relatively small and defined market during our first six months and to be able to gain the trust of more than 100,000 people in a very challenging business environment should not be taken for granted and is a major achievement.”
“We are very pleased to see that our strategy of offering the most competitive prices in the market and having a digital-first marketing and sales strategy is working brilliantly as we are seeing healthy bookings in our entry into the transatlantic market.”
“We have already built a foundation of a truly great team of people within PLAY, a team that is very ambitious and professional with a very strong drive to succeed.”
“2021 was a year of many major milestones and victories for PLAY and I look forward to working with my colleagues on the PLAY team to meet new challenges and continue our success story in the coming year,”
2022 will see the carrier launch services to 24 destinations across Europe and North America.
It said also it has received great reception towards the launch of services to the U.S, particularly on services to Baltimore and Boston which are due to begin in April and May respectively.
For PLAY, especially as we begin to come out of the pandemic slowly, will be interesting to see how the carrier gets on and what other success it may have going into the future.
