Icelandair

It could be said that Icelandair's story began with the dawn of aviation in Iceland. It was in 1919 that airplanes first made it to this northern European country, bringing to Iceland its first aviation experience.

With the passing of time, aviation technology developed further, and in 1937, Iceland was prepared for airline service, so Icelandair began its life, but with the name of Flugfelag Akureyrar. It was based primarily in the northern city of Akureiry[?]. It can be said that Icelandair did not suffer the copious loss of airplanes that many other airlines did worldwide during World War II. As a matter of a fact, it was in 1943 that the airline decided to move its base to the country's capital of Reykjavik, and to officially change the name of the airline to Flugfelag Islands.

By 1944, a competitor, Loftleidir, also known as Icelandic Airlines, began to surface. In 1945, Flugfelag Islands became the first Icelandic air company to fly international flights, when service was inaugurated to Denmark. In 1947, Loftleidir followed suit, starting their own international flights, and in 1953, Loftleidir became the first Icelandic company to fly trans-atlantic flights from Iceland.

That fierce competition kept on going until 1973, when the two airlines merged. At first, they adopted the name flugleidir, a hybrid of their two old names. In 1979, they decided to change the name to Icelandair, but they kept the name of flugleidir for domestic routes.

During the 1980s, the airline kept on working as a profitable company, and in the 1990s, they expanded their cargo operations, made several advertising agreements with such model airplane manufacturers as Wooster and Schabak and kept on being a profitable airline.

For a very long time, Icelandair relied on Boeing 707s for their international routes. That began to change during the 1990s, when they acquired brand new Boeing 757s and began to operate those. They have relied on Boeing 737 jets for a very long time for their short, domestic routes.