Icelandair vs Royal Jordanian

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: Royal Jordanian

  0/10 on the 737 MAX / 757 (Saga Premium) against 10/10 on the 787-9.

• IFE: Royal Jordanian

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

• Lounge & bags: level

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

• Value: Icelandair

  Median premium over the cheapest carrier on the same route: 10/10 against 9/10.

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:

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.

Royal Jordanian: Collins Diamond, 24 seats, the cabin the 787-9 is replacing.

Common questions

Is Icelandair or Royal Jordanian better to Europe?

Royal Jordanian scores 9.3/10 against Icelandair at 6/10 on seat, screens, lounge and fare. On the four dimensions we can verify, Icelandair wins 1 and Royal Jordanian wins 2. Service and food are not scored here because they cannot be read off a spec sheet.

Does the aircraft change the answer?

Yes. Royal Jordanian scores 10/10 on the 787-9 and 5/10 on the 787-8 (Crown Class). 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.