“We are not getting sidetracked by omicron”, insisted Birgir Jónsson, chief executive of Icelandic start-up airline PLAY, on the eve of its big launch. Nevertheless, the timing could have been better.
At 11.30am on Thursday, with the Covid variant threatening to put travel on hold yet again, the world’s newest low-cost carrier put flights from London Stansted to Boston and Baltimore (for easy access to Washington DC) on sale for as little as £139 one-way. PLAY takes to the sky on April 20, although keen transatlantic travellers will have to move fast to snap up the lowest fares – the introductory price is on offer until December 24, and is available for flights between April and June 2022, and September and October 2022. After this period, the standard fare for a one-way ticket will be a slightly costlier £169.
Just as the British public have been warned to reconsider their Christmas plans, PLAY’s launch offers travellers a sliver of positivity for next spring, when, hopefully, the omicron wave will have retreated.
Securing a US permit is a major milestone for the company that launched in 2019. It marks the comeback of budget transatlantic travel, a market from which airlines such as Norwegian have had to retreat.
For fliers, there’s a catch. PLAY’s lower fares are made possible by a short layover in Iceland: this allows it to run smaller planes more cheaply, and pass savings onto its customers. Britons who book a PLAY flight to Baltimore can expect a brief 1 hour 25 minute wait in Reykjavik. Those who join a flight to Boston will have an interlude of 1 hour 50 minutes in the Icelandic capital’s well-equipped (if somewhat expensive) airport. Both services will run four times a week.
Jónsson believes the appetite is there to fill this many flights. “We do see that people are not asking for refunds, or cancelling flights. People want to go at a later date [rather than] leaving their plans altogether,” he says.
Should circumstances disrupt your trip with PLAY, it provides some contingency plans.
It would seem worth purchasing the airline’s cancellation protection, which costs £13 per person. With this cover, a full refund is available, on receipt of certain documentation, including confirmation of a recent Covid-19 diagnosis, an order to quarantine or isolate due to Covid-19, or a medical document from a doctor or midwife. Alternatively, PLAY allows passengers to change the destination or date of their booking. In this case, they would need to cancel. PLAY would then provide a refund code which they can use for their new flight. The backup option would be to cancel the booking and receive a refund of airport taxes.
Despite being shut to most Britons right up until last month, the States could be one of the better prospects for Britons travelling in 2022. The US “seems to be quite confident,” about international travel, says Jónsson.
On the omicron fallout, he thinks the situation will be under more control come April.
