Icelandair (FI, Reykjavik Keflavik) has announced it has finalised a wet-lease agreement with an unspecified carrier covering one B757-200 for the period between May 15 and September 30, 2019.
The B757 will come on top of the two B767-300(ER)s the carriers previously contracted from Portugal's ACMI/charter specialist euroAtlantic Airways (YU, Lisbon). These aircraft are due to join Icelandair's fleet in mid-April and early May, respectively.
The airline did not respond to ch-aviation's question about the source of the wet-leased B757-200. Icelandair said in a statement that the aircraft will be equipped with 184 seats.
The B757-200 is the cornerstone of Icelandair's fleet - the airline operates twenty-three such aircraft. It also operates four in-house B767-300(ER)s, two B757-300s, two B757-200(PF)s, and five B737-8s, which are currently grounded.
Regarding the latter type, the carrier said it updated its schedule on the assumption that the MAX 8s will remain grounded through June 16, 2019. As such, the carrier will cut its number of flights between April 1 and June 15 by 3.6%, mostly by reducing the frequencies to cities served more than daily. It will, however, maintain roughly stable capacity due to the wet-leasing of the two B767-300(ER)s.
"Furthermore, Icelandair has decided to cancel its flights to Cleveland Hopkins in the US and Halifax in Canada this year. This is partly due to the suspension of the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft but also because of a decision to focus on meeting increased demand for flights to and from Iceland by moving supply from destinations that focus on travel between North America and Europe via Iceland," the carrier said.
Icelandair had planned to launch a 4x weekly service to Cleveland on May 31, and a 4x weekly service to Halifax on June 6, 2019.
