LONDON – Icelandic carrier PLAY has announced this week that it has opened up ticket sales for its brand new route between Reykjavik and Porto.
The service is due to get underway in April 2023 on a once-per-week basis to start with, before heading to twice-weekly in October 2023.
Porto will be PLAY’s second destination in Portugal, which comes after the twice-weekly service to Lisbon, which will be continued next year as well.
Commenting on this milestone was PLAY’s CEO Birgir Jonsson:
“We want to be the leading airline between Iceland and the Iberian Peninsula and are working toward that goal by adding Porto as a destination in 2023.”
“We will continue our Lisbon services next year, Lisbon being one of the PLAY´s most popular destinations in 2022. In addition to the two cities in Portugal, we will continue operating our seven destinations in Spain, four of which will be year-round destinations.”
“With our services, Icelanders have more options to get to sunny Spain for less, and we feel the people of Spain really love Iceland and have clearly grabbed the opportunity to fly direct to our beautiful country with PLAY”.
Expansion Continues for PLAY…
Expansion for PLAY continues as the carrier has made quite a few announcements in the last few months already.
Back in August, the airline announced that it is projecting 800,000 passengers in 2022 alone.
Furthermore, the unit cost (CASK excluding fuel) of the airline continues to slip as the airline shrinks its operations, thus streamlining current operations.
PLAY hopes to be operationally profitable by the end of this year. The airline PLAY has fortunately reached its cost target well earlier than expected, being beneath 4 US cents CASK excluding fuel.
This is because the airline has been able to achieve effective cost control and an increase in the economy of scale, with more aircraft in operation.
In the concluded second quarter, the main focus of the airline was to prep for the upcoming notorious summer schedule and its hub-and-spoke operation out of Reykjavik Airport.
In that same month, the airline also announced plans to launch services to Washington D.C, launching in April of next year.
Last month, the airline announced to the Simple Flying Podcast that it is looking to enlarge its Airbus A321neo fleet as well.
The airline also announced that the carrier handled 92,000 passengers in August alone, with the September numbers recently released as well. Stay tuned on AviationSource for more information about that!
Overall…
It remains clear that PLAY is on an upwards trajectory, despite the external factors of a global recession hitting the aviation industry.
For PLAY, it almost seems to be something like the “Reykjavik Effect”, where nothing is really affecting the carrier at this present time, which is a good indicator of growth.
2023 does appear to be the year that will be very interesting for the carrier, especially as most of the growth is expected to take place then.
