Loftleiðir
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Loftleiðir was a private Icelandic airline.
Loftleiðir, or Icelandic Airlines Loftleiðir, was founded on March 10, 1944 by three young Icelandic pilots after returning from training in Canada started the airline. During the first year of operation, they only operated on domestic routes from Reykjavík Airport and international services from Keflavík International Airport
On June 17, 1947, (June 17 is Iceland's Independence day), Loftleiðir inaugurated the first International service, linking Reykjavík and Copenhagen. The aircraft was a Skymaster, the first aircraft fitted for international operations. In 1948 Loftleiðir was granted permission to operate on USA, and August 1948 a Loftleiðir Skymaster landed at Idlewild Airport (now JFK) with 46 passengers and the first commercial flying between Iceland and USA had begun.
In 1952 Loftleiðir opened regular services between New York and Europe via Iceland.
During the 1950-s restrictions on International Air traffic was by and large more rigid than today. The freedoms of the air restricted airliners to carry passenger and cargo to and from the country of the Aircraft's registration only.
Loftleiðir benefited from this by selling air-tickets from USA to European Cities by breaking the ticket into two. One to Iceland and one from Iceland. It was not necessary to break the journey, only issue the passengers with two tickets.
During the 1960-s and 1970-s Loftleiðir introduced low-cost fare on the North Atlantic starting from Luxembourg via the Nordic Countries and Iceland.
The low-cost tickets became very popular and attracted many passengers. The airline faced problems with IATA because of this.
The competition between Loftleiðir and Iceland's flag carrier Flugfélag Islands, led to economical problems and the two companies merged in 1973 into a new company Icelandair.
The name Flugfélag Íslands appeared again in 1997 through a merge of Icelandair and Flugfélag Nordurlands and from 2003 Loftleidir Icelandic operate again as a charter-company sub-charter aircraft to other airline.
