Icelandic Panpan Gaming Airlines closed its doors on Monday after struggling to make profits since its launch four years ago.
In a statement Monday, Play’s board blamed “negative media coverage of its operations” for performance and ticket sales in recent months.
Travelers affected by the Play closure have few flight options. Iceland Airlines said in a statement that it “does not offer passengers special fares” but will increase seats in the intraday market for stranded passengers.
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Wow Air 2.0
Many former executives come from WOW AIR, a former Icelandic budget airline that closed in 2019 and launched Play in 2021. Play’s strategy is very similar to WOW’s strategy: providing dirt, no-cultivation tickets, from seat allocation to Transatlantic Trips thrips Attrips takes Ashive Ashive afe the Everyday (Kef) through Keflavik Airport.
When Play’s first CEO Birgir Jonsson was asked in 2021 about the similarities between failed WOW and Play, he took the comparison as compliment.
“Everyone learned a lot,” he said in an interview with Skift at the time. “Wow what happened to the air [is] They just got too fast. ”He promised that the game would not repeat the error.
According to his words, the game did not grow rapidly under Jonsson, which ended in 2024. The airline added aircraft, with its fleet reaching just 10 Airbus A320neo-theo-the-firaft Fircraft.
Since the WOW era, the problem facing the problem is the changes in the transatlantic market. Major airlines have grown from the coronavirus pandemic, and basic economies still have all the decorations of large network airlines, a strategy for Play leads. This is one of the problems that plague mental airlines, and is currently undergoing restructuring under bankruptcy protection.
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Also for the sake of gaming, new aircraft like the A321XLR opens up new routes for second-tier cities on both sides of the Atlantic, thus reducing the need for Iceland transfers. After the passage peak, travelers are increasingly willing to spend more premium products, which is not available.
To improve its own destiny, Play launched a revised business plan in 2024, shifting its focus to leisure destinations connecting Iceland to Europe, rather than transatlantic links. And, the airline confirmed in June that it will end all transatlantic flights and withdraw from its three U.S. destinations – Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI), Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) and New York Stewart International Airport (SWF) – October.
Play’s last U.S. flight was scheduled to start on October 24, and it’s also the first U.S. destination – but now it’s stopping all flights, effective immediately.
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