Keflavik Airport

✅ Trip Verified | Spacious modern airport let down by exceptionally rude and unhelpful staff. I’ve never experienced such levels of rudeness and hostility by the staff and I have travelled all over the world. The most rude woman I’ve ever encountered however was found in the tax refund office. My mother is disabled and she said she didn’t care, but made her crouch down in front of a queue of everyone, embarrassing her, to pull out a jacket to prove for the tax refund purpose. Expect eye-rolling, shoulder shrugging and other levels of complete disdain for other human beings. If you want to encourage people into your country then treat them with some respect. Completely spoiled our trip and will not be coming back. Avoid if you can. What repugnant, awful staff. It wouldn’t hurt to smile once in a while at the tourists who are pumping money into your very expensive country. The food is so overpriced it puts London to shame, so I’d suggest avoiding that also. Duty free is questionable, when prices are comparable to duty-paid items back home. Not sure why that even exists.

✅ Trip Verified | This airport sadly spoilt an otherwise fantastic holiday. We had a early morning flight. Got to the airport 5.30am and the airport was jam packed and chaotic! The signs and directions were unclear. We checked in online the night before. All we needed to do was to print the luggage tags and that became such a frustrating exercise. The first two machines for whatever reason would not print. The queues are long. You could hardly get through the crowds. The staff were unhelpful! By the time our luggage tags were printed, we felt like our blood pressure had gone through the roof! We travel extensively and this is the worst airport we have come across. The African countries have better airports and check ins than Reykjavik. It is a real shame that as the largest airport, and with tourism being the number 2 earner for the country, no efforts or investment are spared to improve this experience. Tourists leaving the country with a sour taste is not the best advertisement for the country! Security checks was the only thing that seems to move smoothly.

✅ Trip Verified | The airport clearly cannot handle the passenger volume. Yet Iceland prices are double elsewhere so I can only deduce they are raking in the passenger charges to pay off the debt! We arrived early (thank goodness) as it was an absolute schamozzle. No other way to describe the airport. Nothing flows, signs are confusing and the terminal was packed and this was at 06.00 in the morning! We had trouble getting machines to produce baggage labels and the queues were horrendous. We had to endure a 20 minute queue to get through security (security staff were barking at passengers) and the terminal building was full. It dulled an otherwise pleasant stay. I can’t help but feel the authorities are jamming more flights and squeezing more passengers through without spending a dime on upgrading infrastructure. We travel extensively and this airport rates at the bottom of our list, even African countries are better run!

✅ Trip Verified | The airport is very overcrowded with limited options for food and shopping. Queue times were average and the staff were just fine. The facilities were not too clean but not horrible either. Available seating was very lacking.

✅ Trip Verified | A bad experience ending an otherwise pleasant visit to Iceland! The automatic check-in/bag-tag machine printed our boarding passes but not the bag tags! No other help from staff than "wait for the check-in desk to open". Seems there is no "error handling" if these machine run out of "paper" or get a "paper-crash"! Airport staff seemed to blame the airlines, which I would assume are not responsible for the airport infrastructure... When at last the check-in desk opened we were number three in line. First in line appeared to be a "group" which grew to ~10 by jumping the queue, and took more than half an hour to finish. Security was terrible: staff barking at you for no obvious reason. Was waiting and waiting for bags etc. which appeared to have been "diverted" and was on a different line. Staff coming with case containing bags, throwing it at a table and commanded to take it, then barking because I stepped over a "forbidden" line, and did not remove my stuff quickly enough. Checking of wife with an artificial hip taking what felt like 10 minutes, and forcing her to step up on a "podium" which in itself was an effort for her. Sad, sad, sad! Why should this be our last experience, and what gets stuck in ones mind from an otherwise pleasant Iceland.

✅ Trip Verified | This airport is a horrible experience. The security people bark orders at you. Very disrespectful. Very crowded, blocked toilets. Dreadful really and a very poor way to end your trip.

I have travelled to and through Iceland six times in the past 24 months. The traveller experience is poor at best. Icelandair and Wow and other airlines have simply outpaced the growth of the passenger services. There are no passenger services. Passengers arrive only to be herded onto busses on a remote runway and driven in cold busses to a crowded smelly and stuffy passenger corral. The food services are crowded and poor. The toilets are crowded and mostly clean given the stampede of passengers. We like Icelandair but hate Iceland and this airport so we travel through other countries now. Tourists should abandon Iceland and Keflavik until Iceland builds a real airport for real human beings.

Not Verified | On my travels all over the world I have never experienced such rude and extremely disrespectful staff, especially the security screening. I will never set foot again at this awful airport. This is the worst airport in the western world.

✅ Trip Verified | Literally the worst service I have ever seen. The lady at baggage claims services was super rude. We have been waiting at baggage claim for over 2 hours, with no information on our flight and their luggage offloading. Flights arriving after us have gotten their luggage and we have not. Never want to land here again. 0/10 for service and extremely didsapointed.

✅ Trip Verified | I arrived on 6 Dec 2018 and was immediately less than impressed with the entire experience. The seating was scarce and the signage was poor. The fact that you couldn’t buy food in the “departure” area when you just arrived is ridiculous. Sorry for being hungry after an 8.5 hour flight. Then when I got to the rental car pickup no one could help me. I had made a resevation under the Spartan Race which 1000s of other racers did as well yet no one at the airport had any clue of that. I stopped at 3 rental agencies that said “I don’t know. It’s not ours”. The very useless advice from the information desk was, “ I don’t know. Buy a sim card” thanks. After waiting 4 hours, my agent confirmed my reservation with none other than Hertz which I had gone to before. Of course they were apologetic and excuse ridden this time around. However, their incompetence caused me to miss one of the tours I was schedules for. Amazing considering I had five hours and yet the wonderful airport managed to waste all that time. This is by far the worst managed airport I’ve been to. And that’s including Newark, JFK, LAX, SFO and so on. So good job Keflavik. At least you did well in one thing.