Keflavik International Airport

Keflavík: Iceland's gateway between two continents

Keflavík International Airport (IATA KEF, ICAO BIKF) lies on the Reykjanes peninsula in the southwest of Iceland, about 50 kilometers from Reykjavík, on a former US naval air station. It is Iceland's only major international airport and the home hub of Icelandair, whose business model turns the island into a stepping stone between Europe and North America, with a free stopover for those who want to see the country on the way. Almost every visitor to Iceland lands here. The live radar on this page shows the traffic over the lava fields; the arrivals and departures pages are linked above it.

Airlines and destinations

Icelandair dominates the airport with flights to Copenhagen, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Helsinki, Oslo, Frankfurt and other European cities and, across the Atlantic, to New York, Boston, Toronto, Seattle, Washington, Chicago, Denver and more, timed so that passengers connect in Keflavík within an hour or two. SAS, easyJet, British Airways, Lufthansa, Finnair, Transavia, Wizz Air and Norwegian fly in from Europe, Delta and United from the United States, and Air Greenland connects Nuuk. In our route data, Copenhagen, London Heathrow, Amsterdam, Paris and Helsinki are the most frequently flown connections, and New York JFK, Toronto and Seattle the busiest across the Atlantic.

Getting from Keflavík to Reykjavík

There is no train. The Flybus and Airport Direct coaches leave after every arrival for the BSÍ bus terminal in Reykjavík in about 45 minutes, with hotel drop-offs available; tickets are sold online and in the arrivals hall. Public bus 55 is cheaper but slow. Taxis to the city are expensive, well over an hour's wage for many travelers, so share one if you can. Rental cars are the way to see Iceland and the companies have desks in the terminal and shuttles to their lots; the Blue Lagoon lies a twenty-minute drive from the airport, a classic first or last stop.

Good to know

Keflavík has one terminal, expanded in stages, with the Schengen gates in one wing and the non-Schengen gates for Britain and North America in another; a transfer between a European and an American flight means passport control and a walk, so allow the time Icelandair gives you. The airport is busiest in the early morning and mid-afternoon waves when the transatlantic connections meet. Iceland is in Schengen but not in the EU, and the króna is the currency, though cards work everywhere. The old city airport Reykjavík handles domestic flights and Greenland; for the north, Akureyri has a few international services. Every airport we track is listed in the airport overview.