PLAY airlines carried 106,042 passengers in February 2024, which is a 66% increase from February last year when PLAY carried 63,949 passengers. PLAY had a load factor of 81% in February, compared to 76.9% last year. The load factor increase is a sign of demand picking up again after the decrease in demand followed by inaccurate global news coverage of the seismic activity in Reykjanes peninsula last fall.

Of all the passengers that travelled with PLAY in February, 27.9% were flying from Iceland, 40% were flying to Iceland and 32.1% were connecting passengers (VIA).

Our North America market has seen an increase in load factor, from 67% in February 2023 to 78% in February 2024. Paris and Barcelona had over 90% load factor in February and the load factor for Alicante was around 90%.

90% of PLAY´s flights in February arrived on time and the on-time performance for the year 2024 to date is 84.1%

New destinations added and record sales

PLAY has launched ticket sales for scheduled flights to Madeira in Portugal and Marrakech in Morocco. PLAY’s service to Madeira will start on October 15 and flights will be operated weekly on Tuesdays. Flights to Marrakech will start on October 17 and operate up to twice a week, on Thursdays and Sundays. PLAY has also added Vilnius in Lithuania to its route network as well as Split in Croatia.

PLAY saw strong sales in February and had a record sales week in the beginning of the month. February also had the highest daily revenue in one month in the history of PLAY. It is evident that demand has picked up again and forward bookings for the year are looking robust.

Birgir Jónsson, CEO of PLAY:

“February was a pretty good month for PLAY. We see that the demand is returning to the market after a challenging period following the misleading international news coverage around the recent seismic activity that cooled demand for Iceland as a destination over the last months.

However, in February, we saw the tide beginning to turn, our load factor of 81% was 4 percentage points higher than it was in February last year. At the same time, the number of passengers grew by 66% to 106 thousand. Our excellent operational teams and crews achieved 90% on-time performance, which is a true feat during winter operations in Iceland and yet another testament to their professionalism and skill.

We also recently announced a few new destinations. Split, Vilnius, Madeira, and Marrakech were commercially launched, and in the case of Marrakech, we are very proud to introduce the first scheduled flights between Iceland and Africa.

We reached a significant milestone in our financing when we secured share subscription commitments in the amount of ISK 4000 million (around 30m USD) from both existing and new shareholders. Once this financing phase is completed and approved by our annual general meeting in March, we are ready to enter our next growth phase, well-financed and laser-focused on achieving our future goals.

When comparing the upcoming summer season to last year, we see significantly higher load factors and yields and continued growth in the vitally important ancillary revenue stream. We at PLAY, therefore, have many things to be happy about, and we will all strive to keep our costs low, grow our revenue, and keep on giving our passengers quality service at a great price.”