Edelweiss Air vs Icelandair

Best product each one flies

Scored on what can be verified. Service, food and ground recovery are absent deliberately: they need someone in the seat, and they live in the reviews rather than here.

One caveat on the Value line, stated rather than buried: Value is computed from business fares, and a carrier with too few of them does not get a Value score at all. Where you see a dash, we have fewer than three priced business routes for that airline and did not want to invent a figure from one or two — so its product score is the mean of three dimensions rather than four, and it is not directly comparable to a score built on hundreds of fares. The airlines with the most fares behind them are named on the business-class ranking.

Dimension by dimension

• Seat: Edelweiss Air

  8/10 on the A350-900 against 0/10 on the 737 MAX / 757 (Saga Premium).

• IFE: Edelweiss Air

  Screens, connectivity and power: 8/10 against 4/10.

• Lounge & bags: level

  What the fare includes before you board: 10/10 against 10/10.

• Value: level

  Median premium over the cheapest carrier on the same route: 10/10 against 10/10.

What happens if the aircraft swaps

Both carriers are paying-the-same-fare-either-way propositions on some frames. The worst product each one flies:

Edelweiss Air: Sogerma Solstys in an alternating 1-2-1 / 2-2-1 stagger. Recorded as no direct aisle access because the field means every seat.

Icelandair: Saga Premium is a wide recliner, not a lie-flat business class: roughly 20 inches wide with about 5 inches of recline. Closer to US domestic first class than to a transatlantic business seat, and the shorter Iceland sectors are what it is built for.

Common questions

Is Edelweiss Air or Icelandair better to Europe?

Edelweiss Air scores 9/10 against Icelandair at 6/10 on seat, screens, lounge and fare. On the four dimensions we can verify, Edelweiss Air wins 2 and Icelandair wins 0. Service and food are not scored here because they cannot be read off a spec sheet.

Does the aircraft change the answer?

Yes. Edelweiss Air scores 8/10 on the A350-900 and 5/10 on the A340-300. Check the equipment on your date before deciding.

Has Jon flown either of these?

Neither, so this page is product facts and fares only. Any review we publish of either will be labeled Researched until that changes.