Keflavik Airport

My 12 year old daughter and I spent 3 weeks traveling in 4 countries and made an Iceland stopover our last adventure. Big mistake! Keflavik airport was designed and built for 200,000 people, and they have put 1,000,000 people in it. It's pretty clear that the people of Iceland are capitalizing on a successful advertising campaign, but they are in it for the money. They don't care about your experience as a traveler. They add new stores so you will spend your money there but not new seating or organization to help the crushed masses move through the halls. Want to purchase something? No problem. But if you want to find a seat, forget it. Want to know where you're flight departs? Nope. That's a secret. You need to wait in the shopping area for a last minute update on the board. Did you find your gate? Congratulations. I bet you can't find a seat because there are 5 seats for 200 people. Oh, and mind where you stand while you wait for the secret silent signal that it's time to board the plane - people are passing through to get to other gates. You are going to need your passport out so it can be checked by 10 different people in the span of 40 minutes. Need to pick up your bags? When we arrived, there were 2 carousels for 13 arriving flights, and the bags were being handled manually. So settle in, it's going to take a while. My whole family intended to travel back to Iceland on our next journey but I had such a negative experience in Keflavik that I refuse to return. They want my money but they treat me disrespectfully with they way they manage their chaotic, confusing, overcrowded, inefficient airport. They don't care about you or me. They want your money.

This is our 2nd visit to Iceland. Previously we traveled in 2013. Keflavik was disorganized then with few seats at the gate area but our recent visit we encountered an airport in total chaos. Arrival was fine. We then departed for London after a 5 day stay in Iceland. Keflavik makes no announcements of flight gates or delays. Icelandair checkin was very good. There are about 10 seats per gate and flights were delayed. The flight back from London was dreadful. We left from Heathrow an oasis of calm to an arrival in Keflavik that was bedlam. People milling around not knowing where their gates. Flights were delayed with no information as to departure time. Again, 10 seats at departure gate for a plane of over 200 passengers. A bus draws up to take you to plane. There is no orderly boarding. No seat numbers are called. Just pushing to get on the bus. Never again

Over capacity at Keflavik Airport. No seating at gates. 2 hours to deliver checked baggage. Large backpacks delivered to "odd sized baggage" and because of the number of travelers who come here backpacking there are crowds of people waiting in one corner. Upon arrival from our San Francisco flight we waited in line for 10 mins for breakfast and then were told that they couldn't sell us the food because we were arrivals not departures and there's a different tax bracket. At least put a sign up for this ridiculous rule.

This airport is clearly over capacity. It was designed to carry half the passengers than it does. People are bumping into each other as arriving and departing passengers pass through same narrow corridors. Some of the gates have line ups on sides of these corridors making them even narrower. There is not enough seating for waiting passengers. You can get plenty of food, which is quite tasty and reasonably priced, but then good luck finding a place to sit down to eat it in comfort. The airport is a victim of the success of Iceland's tourism campaign and Iceland's cheap airlines as many passengers use the airport to transfer connections. If you plan on doing that, I would suggest paying the price differential and avoid this airport. When trying to check our luggage, we were shuttled in to a self serve area where you put your luggage on a scale, scan your boarding pass and luggage tags. Great idea, except different scales where showing different weight and our piece got rejected as overweight on one scale but was fine on another. Have you heard of scale calibration or increasing error tolerances? To the management: please travel to other hub airports and learn about terminal design and build another terminal.

We thought this was a great airport. We travelled from Toronto to Glasgow with a connection her on our outbound journey and from Glasgow to Toronto with a 5 day stopover on our inbound. For our connecting flight we literally got off our (Icelandair) plane at one gate and had to walk for a short distance to our new gate. Boarding passes had been provided in Toronto for both flights. Signage was easy and the airport was quite quiet when we arrived so seating was not an issue. One huge plus for us - travelling with a 2 year old - was the availability of strollers. Our son is on the cusp of not needing his so we travelled without it but he was asleep when we arrived. Having strollers available in the terminal was a great idea. Arriving back in this airport from Glasgow on our way home we were staying for a few days so came through security rather than just connected. There is a nice large duty free store and plenty of luggage carts. The whole process of getting through security was quick and easy and our luggage was waiting for us. The one downside on this leg of our journey was the plane did not get its own gate so we were bussed to the terminal. For our final trip from this airport back to Toronto, we again had a relatively easy time. We were assisted to check in at the self serve kiosks by a friendly member of staff, and then made our way through security with minimal delay. Again the loaner stroller came in handy and we were able to take it through security with them checking it before we proceeded through the very extensive duty free shop to our gate. This is where our only complaint of the airport comes in. The process for boarding our plane seemed very disorganised. I am not sure if this is the fault of the airline (Icelandair) or the airport but we had to queue to show our boarding passes and then more and more people were herded into a very small area before they opened access to the stairs up to the aircraft ramp. It might have been easier to do this as a single process than two separate ones. The plane departed 90 minutes late due to slow loading (apparently). Overall a pleasant experience at this airport, and would not hesitate to come through it again either as a connecting passenger or as a departing/arriving one.

Keflavik is not an airport, but a "work in progress". Most of the flights depart from, and arrive at, some distance from the airport and you have to use a bus. Once inside the terminals, signage is adequate but departure information is difficult to find. Seating is sparse, which is bad news because most flights seem to be delayed. The worst experience is with the ground staff. Nobody knows anything - barely any announcements, no distinctions for boarding between economy, business, priority etc, all is handled on the basis that unless you know what you are doing, don't count on the ground staff. Having to use this airport when flying with Icelandair is annoying because it always dampened the experience. Trash cleaned away only once a day - it just piles up around the cans. Zero management and organization.

Keflavik is a terribly overextended airport. Even in transit you have to clear security as you enter the Schengen region. It is slow, massively overcrowded and the facilities not great. Iceland itself is well worth a visit but the airport has serious growing pains - avoid if at all possible.

Keflavik Airport is a transfer hub between North America and Europe. Passengers take advantage of it for the low fares advertise by Icelandair and Wow Airlines. But it seems to have over extended itself. While my transit to Glasgow was smooth, the return was not. The very small airport was packed with passengers on multiple flights going out virtually at the same time to all over North America. Everything was delayed and no one could figure out if they were in the right line for their flight. The airport does not have nearly enough jetways, so many planes are parked way out on the tarmac and transfer to flights was by bus. The airport volume has clearly grown beyond its capacity and it's in dire need of expansion.

Chaos at Keflavik - we transited through KEF in May 2016 and again in June 2016 from Seattle to Amsterdam. We have never seen an airport this bad and we have traveled millions of miles. It looked like a badly organized zoo, especially at the departure area. Signage was very confusing. The people density was huge with no room to move or even to stand. Being seniors there were basically no seats availble. Clearly some help is needed to improve this airport. Obviously we traveled with Icelandair and nothing but praise for their excellent service.

We found the staff at the airport not very friendly. We had a 5 hour layover and went down to enquire at the bus desk about going into Reykjavik and the staff member was not helpful at all. The food and gift shops are ridiculously expensive (especially for Canadians). To get a small snack for 3 of us converts to almost $40 Canadian. Don't mind paying if the food is good but it was not. Duty free store had tons of staff standing around chatting with each other totally ignoring customers. Anyways pros are that it is less busy than London and not as far to get to gates.