This post has been updated to include a comment from WOW Air.
St. Louis, say goodbye to Iceland. No more will you travel to her otherworldly waterfalls, volcanos, black beaches, and geothermal areas—or at least not directly after January 7, 2019.
Iceland's budget airline WOW Air, which added direct $99 flights from St. Louis to Keflavík International Airport in May, is discontinuing service, according to a statement from St. Louis Lambert International Airport on Monday. This means that Lambert will no longer offer transatlantic travel, as the flight from St. Louis to Keflavík, just outside of the country's capital, Reykjavík, was the only one that crossed the Atlantic Ocean.
"Unfortunately, it has to be said that St Louis was a disappointment for WOW air this summer in terms of end results, with load factors not achieving the targets that were set for the route in the beginning, and compared to other markets in our network," Svana Fridriksdottir, a communications representative for WOW, told St. Louis Magazine. According to Fridriksdottir, travelers who booked flights after January 7 can get a full refund.
Read the full statement from Lambert below:
St. Louis Lambert International Airport was informed by WOW air that it is discontinuing its STL to Iceland non-stop service after January 7, 2019. We’re disappointed because the response from customers across the St. Louis region was strong and we were told we were one of the airline’s top performing markets in the Midwest that were added last spring. The airline will not meet the criteria for airport incentives with its announcement to cease service in January. The Airport, the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership and others were proud of our efforts to bring WOW air to St. Louis and we will continue to explore new opportunities for non-stop international service.
There is some good news, however. According to the statement, the service will stop after January 7, 2019, so there's still time to book a direct flight. According to Google Flights, the first available direct, round-trip flight out of St. Louis, on November 3, is now $300.
More good news: There are still two other international destinations you can fly to directly from Lambert. Air Canada offers nonstop service from St. Louis to Toronto. Frontier and Southwest fly direct to Cancun.
