Northern Star

Icelandair CEO Bogi Nils Bogason discusses his airline's niche allure and its plans for growth as the country becomes a global destination

- Enrique Perrella

UP IN ICELAND, where winds and temperatures are harsh and change rapidly, running an airline and keeping it profitable is no easy task let alone during a pandemic. But the country's flag carrier, Icelandair, has found a clever way of doing business, capturing a small stake of the world's most crowded and competitive markets while keeping its numbers in the black.

Icelandair offers customers an astute stopover program, inviting passengers to travel between North America and Europe by making a tourist stop in Iceland. This strategy has benefited the airline with high load factors and boosted tourism in one of the world's most spectacular destinations. In Reykjavík, Bogi Nils Bogason, president and CEO of the Icelandair Group, sat down with Business Traveler to discuss Icelandair's path through the pandemic and what seems to be an optimistic future.

After a successful career as an auditor and accountant at KPMG, Bogason reached the top position at Icelandair in 2018. "It wasn't easy," he says. "As soon as I was named CEO, the global grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX affected our network heavily. And when we came out of that crisis, the pandemic arrived."