Keflavik Airport

✅ Verified Review | Utter Chaos. More than an hour and half from arriving to getting through security. Snaking queues of confused passengers everywhere. Not enough signs. Ground staff were trying their best but clearly the shambolic nature of passing through this airport is common as they were very well practised at giving instructions. There were up to 6 planes due to take off at any one time which clearly isn't possible and ensured that the airport was packed. Get there early would be my advice. And bring a book.

An expensive airport even for Icelandic prices. Stressful waiting for flight because of continual drilling and machinery noise. Easyjet boarding announcements confusing as they omitted destination! Poor seating arrangements and lack of seating mean this airport is not equipped for large passenger numbers. Too much space allowed for money making restaurants, duty free shops and gift areas.

This is the story of the little airport that could. KEF has always been a very efficent airport for arrivals, departures and transits. However, with the recent massive increase in tourism to Iceland with so many new flights, it has been a testing time for KEF. Last week, we arrived during the morrning rush from 0630-0730 but even so the wait for Immigration was less than 10 minutes. Customs was a walk through. On departure, also during the height of the busy time in the afternoon, security took less than 5 minutes and passport control to North America had no line. The problem is that at the gate areas, after passport control there is extremely limited seating. This does need to be addressed but as the airport completes more gates over the next year, the crowding will be diminished. There is still the need to bus people to and from aircraft and yesterday it was efficient. Not the best airport in the world but way better than most US airports.

What a mess. Went through here twice - once at 4am and once at 2pm. You'd think a small airport like this would be easy to use, but it's not. Confusing signage, too many stairs, not enough chairs. While boarding, rather than sitting in a nearby boarding area and waiting for your section of the plane to board, everyone lines up in the hallway for at least 30 minutes before a flight. It's not so bad at 4am, but at 2pm all the planes for WOW get in and go out at the same time, and the departure area is crammed with people in long, very slow-moving lines attempting to buy food and board planes. I had about 90 minutes to connect between flights and tried to buy a sandwich and drinks in the airport cafe before a flight, but gave up because the line was so long that I knew I wouldn't be able to do it before my plane left. When you offload from a plane, everyone is routed through the duty-free area in the hopes that you'll buy something. The problem is the people shopping block the ones trying to get out of the arrivals area, which causes a human traffic jam.

Lately I fly often through Keflavik, sometimes because I have business there and other times when connecting between Europe and Canada. Although both Iceland Air and Wow Air offer good products/services this can't be said about Keflavik Airport. Though there is improvement over the last weeks, but still when you have to depart from the higher D gates (21-29 I believe) you are brought to this central bus gate area and that is just horrible. Not enough room, no seats and several flight departing/boarding around same time. And then you get in the bus and go to the aircraft in blowing wind and rain/snow. Now I assume that this will be over when the expansion of KEF is completed? The other deficiency I noticed recently is the Aircraft De-icing. Now you would expect that for an Icelandic airport they would have top of the bill Aircraft De-icing right? Wrong! Old trucks, just one per aircraft and it looked terrible, and I have a little experience so I know when I see poor de-icing. I couldn't really tell (it was dark on both occasions) if it was the airport or the handlers, but they should address this.

Chaotic Keflavik needs help! This airport can't handle the number of visitors it's getting now. It desperately needs to streamline procedures, change the design and flow of both the terminal and air traffic. Airport staff also need retraining. Until then, things will get worse. Another 700,000 visitors are expected in 2017. Good luck to them all! Arrival: About 6 flights arrived within minutes of each other. That's 1000+ passengers. There are no covered ramps from the planes to the terminal, so expect to get wet and windblown. There's no washroom on the arrivals level. Once back to the main level, it's time for the thousand+ to go up one escalator to customs. The escalator gets shut down during these busy times, so expect to wait. There is a stairway up, but it's blocked by the crowds. Once through customs, manned by police officers who don't say a word or even look at you, it's time to go back downstairs and take the long walk through a leaky walkway and 2 duty-free shops to get to the baggage carousel. After waiting at the only operating carousel, our bags didn't arrive. This was the posted carousel for our flight, but instead our bags were put somewhere else, just dropped on the terminal floor, never on any carousel. The long wait was a complete waste. Okay. Flybus staff person was not helpful at all, so we took Gray Line. Departure: Hurricane Matthew was blowing itself out on Iceland, but this was the least of our worries. You really do need at least 2.5 hours before departure here. Very few self-check terminals were working. Washrooms in this area are not sufficient: 3 cubicles for the ladies. Past the baggage self-check and the hostile woman supervising it, you can expect to pass through 2 duty-free shops again. Yes, Iceland wants you to empty your pockets and forces you through the aisles to your departure gate. Yes, this is heavily staffed, unlike the rest of the airport. 4 flights were scheduled for take-off simultaneously in our gate area, and a fifth 15 minutes later. Yes, that's a throng of 1000+ again, crammed in like cattle in an area with only a few seats. People stand touching shoulders, and sit on the floor. This is a silent airport. So, guess what? Someone decided to change our gate. No announcement was made. We were already past the sign showing the gate number and, oh well, it said we were at the right gate anyways. Departure time came and went without announcement. Someone found a staff person, who told them. They started shuffling to get out, and word spread through the crowd, so then those who weren't trying to push through the crowd to change gates were trying to push to their airline counter. Soon, all the people from 2 flights were turning around. Once we were at the new gate, an announcement was made that all flights were cancelled indefinitely. Oh, wait, it's a silent airport again. People are boarding our flight. This is not on the display board. The board is a cruel joke. Oh, look, a sub-hurricane, blowing bags and laminated pamphlets at us, as we lean into the wind/rain, trying not to be blown off our feet. We're late by 2 hours, soaking wet. No other flights are leaving now. We pray. KEF airport is run by evil gnomes.

✅ Verified Review | I travel 35+ weeks each year around the globe and Keflavik is the absolute worst most dysfunctional airport it has ever been my displeasure to set foot in. First off, trying to get to the airport is impossible as there are no signs on the highways. Once in the airport there are still zero signs telling you where to go. The bag check in process is complete chaos as there are kiosks, self bag drop lines, check in lines, and about 10 times as many people as the airport should be able to handle. The security line is another joke. From the person stopping everyone to ask their nationality to the security this is another complete wreck. Better make sure you take literally every piece of lint out of your pocket or the detectors will go off. And then you are going to have to go to the back of the line while the rest of your stuff gets manhandled by security. Now that you've already been in the airport for 4+ hours there's another 15 minute walk just to get to the gates. And all of the flights leave at the same time from the same area so it's just a big room with people squished shoulder to shoulder. Oh and you also have to cram on a bus to get to the airport. I would not come back to Iceland solely just to avoid the airport. It is that bad. The duty free store is nice though. They have about 5 times more people working there than at the bag check in.

I was so excited to have a stop in Reykjavik. I knew it would be brief but at least I could look at the gift shop and get a drink, right? So wrong. The planes arrive out on the tarmac and they shuttle you to the airport by buses. But at the terminal the signage is unclear. The sign says I need to go up these stairs but there's a guy that has it blocked off? Finally allowed up the stairs to a huge hall funneling you into immigration. No lines, signs or direction. Just hundreds of people pushing forward in a mash. At least on this side of immigration there's some signs so we know where to go because this has eaten up 40 minutes of our 1 hour stop. Down the hallway, down the escalator into another hall packed full of people and no one with any clue as to why or where we are going. It turned out to be a "line" into a light security to get onto the shuttle to get back out to the plane. Well, at least I got a photo of the landscape while I was waiting on the outdoor stairs to board the plane. Might have had a better rating if I didn't spend my entire time there in high stress line ups.

First let me say the Icelandic people are some of the most friendly in the world. However their main “International“ airport at Keflavik has to be one the very worst in the world. My wife and I have recently had the misfortune of travelling through the airport travelling Saga Class on Icelandair. We usually try to travel business class as we are both over 70 and both have had artificial implants (two knee transplants for me and two hip transplants for my wife.) Check in was easy, but from then on in the airport was just chaos. Elevators are under repair and the walks from check in to anywhere, are basically route marches with no seating available on route. As we have transplants we are used to being singled out at the security booths. But in all our travels, in those airports where the young and healthy are allowed to leave their shoes on, we have never been very rudely instructed to go back through the screen and remove our shoes after setting the scan alarms off. Taking shoes off is not that difficult for the young, but it is not so easy for our age group when there is no seating at the booth and one is expected to do the task standing up. When I mentioned that I had never been requested to do this exercise anywhere else in the world we have travelled to, I was curtly informed this was standard procedure. If so it is standard procedure for Keflavik and no- where else, as usually shoes are scanned while wearing and either sitting down or gaining support by leaning against the luggage conveyor. Other reviews have mentioned at length about the lack of information, and seating provisions, and the abysmal gate arrangements (we were at gates 33, 34, 35.and 36 and the entire area in front of these gates was just a shambles) so I will not go into any more detail on this aspect as it is well recorded by now. But I would ask whatever happened to simple things like small children or older people being allowed to board first, boarding by row numbers (back of the aircraft first), or without pushing our “business class” arrangements that business class passengers get some sort of early boarding arrangement also. These procedures are standard for most airports around the world, but obviously and rather sadly Keflavik has a set of very very different standard procedures.

This was a really stressful check in. No people just =machines. There were a few people wandering around with I am here to help t-shirts. They were about as much use as a chocolate teapot. All they said was just wait. No hint of walking you through the system. Even the teenagers in our party struggled. Everybody in the queues were exasperated and frustrated. My advice. Get rid of the self service machines and go back to proper check ins with real people that you can interact with.