WOW Air Airbus A320-232. Photo / Creative Commons image by Flickr user aero_icarus
Andrew Potter flies WW206 from England to Iceland.
The plane: As we board the plane, a song with the chorus "I don't want to die" is piped through the cabin of the Airbus A320. This must be the WOW factor.
Class: Hagkerfi - that's "Economy" in Icelandic.
Price: $238, one way.
On time? A perfect on-time departure. Cool, as ice.
My seat: 20C, a comfortable enough place to park myself for three hours.
Fellow passengers: My sister and my girlfriend dominate the left side of row 20. Behind me is a giant Icelandic man with a face as red as lava and a volcanic temper to match. Clearly boozed upon boarding, he puts away cans of Icelandic brew like a demented, Scandinavian David Boon. When we arrive in Iceland, he staggers off looking bewildered.
How full: Fairly, but not completely.
Entertainment: An inflight magazine, nothing else. I'm packing my iPad, and using a handy splitter cable, so my lady and I watch the final two episodes of Breaking Bad. It's cracking, but as soon as I see Iceland's famous Blue Lagoon, I think of Walter White's famous blue meth.
The service: The cabin crew are perky Icelanders with impish humour and quirky uniforms featuring Thunderbird-inspired hats. WOW, which is always capitalised, rose from the ashes of budget airline Iceland Express, keeping the same business model, but getting a jazzier name. Presumably, OMG Air and WTF Jet were already taken.
Food and drink: A trolley filled with expensive beer, salty snacks and watery coffee, which you could teleport into nearly any budget airline in Europe.
The toilets: Pretty standard stuff, but there's a mini-moustache stuck to the mirror so you can give yourself a Groucho Marx-style selfie.
Luggage: Wheely bag in the overhead bin; anything else you pay for.
The airport experience: Keflavik is Iceland's main international airport a 45-minute drive from the capital, Reykjavik. The Blue Lagoon is near the airport, and many travellers stop in at it before catching their flight.
Would I fly this again? Sure. It was a painless European budget airline experience.
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