For Bostonians seeking low-cost flights to Europe, this story is going to sound incredibly familiar. A Reykjavik-based airline will begin serving Logan in the spring. The barebones airline will offer bargain flights to Iceland. Once there, travelers can connect to airports throughout Europe. Introductory fares start at $109 each way.
The airline, called Play, is closely following a business model established by another Icelandic airline called WOW Air, which began servicing Logan in 2015. The trouble, however, is that WOW went bankrupt four years after it arrived in Boston. In doing so, it stranded hundreds of passengers around the world. The similarities go even further. Much of the management team of Play were on the management team of WOW. Even the CEO of Play was the deputy CEO of WOW. A betting man might gamble that this scenario is not looking particularly positive.
How can Play possibly avoid the same fate as WOW?
“The model of WOW did really well until the company kind of broke it and they began to fly to the West Coast,” said Birgir Jónsson, the CEO of Play. “WOW introduced wide body jets and bigger aircraft. They flew to India, they introduced Israel, and basically broke the business model that actually had proven to work.”
The business model that had originally worked for WOW, and that Jónsson is hoping will do the same for Play, is short-haul flights from the East Coast of North America to Play’s hub at Keflavík Airport. This time, there will be no expansion to the West Coast or other locations that require a long flight to Iceland. At one point, WOW introduced a first-class cabin. Jónsson said none of that will be happening with Play.
“We can take the lessons learned and build on them,” he said. “And try to avoid making the same mistakes as they did.”
Play launched in 2019, an unfortunate time to introduce an airline given the plummeting demand that came with the pandemic the following year, but Jónsson said business through the…