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On Monday, September 29th, 2025, the Icelandic airline FlyPlay Airlines (2019-2025), a.k.a. Play Airlines, died and rested. The end was so abrupt and sudden, it left passengers flying on the airline stranded that day. Chaos erupted as news websites and channels reported the airline’s demise. So what is this airline? What caused it to shutter? And what caused the problems?
Let’s start with the first question.
Play Airlines is- (clears throat) I mean was a low-cost carrier founded 6 years ago in Reykjavik (RAY-kya-veek), Iceland, by Amar Mar Magnusson and Sveinn Ingi Steinborsson, who were formerly WOW Air (2011-2019) executives. The airline officially took off in 2021, offering budget flights between Iceland and various destinations in Europe and North America. Its hub was the Keflavic International Airport (KIA), the largest airport in Iceland snd near Reykjavik. The fleet of the airline consisted of Boeing Airbuses A320neo and A321neo aircraft, configured for short and medium haul routes.
Play Airlines ceased operations abruptly on September 29th, 2025, the day this script was originally made. The airline cancelled all flights booked and entered administration. This abrupt collapse left thousands of passengers stranded and around 400-500 employees out of a job.
For key problems to be stated, the airline had tried to restructure, but it had lost too much money. In 2024 alone, it had lost $66 million, which is about 31 ISK per passenger carried on Play. Sales of the airline had decreased sharply in the months leading to September, intensified by negative media coverages,
Also, Play had tried to use WOW Air’s model of connecting secondary European cities to the United States, but the market was too small and was too low yield to sustain operations, and a late pivot to point-to-point leisure routes and a small domestic base in Iceland hammered the final nail in the coffin for FlyPlay Airlines. This demise mirrors Wow Air’s and Primera Air (2002-2018)’s demise, as they both had similar problems and also stranded passengers at the time of their shutdown.
IcelandAir is expected to pick up the bones.
