Southwest and Icelandair have signed a codeshare agreement, but will Southwest customers really book trips to Europe from Southwest?
If you are considering booking travel LiveAndLetsFly.com appreciates your support.
If you haven’t followed us on Facebook or Instagram, add us today.
Southwest Airlines and Icelandair Interline Agreement
A few months ago, Southwest Airlines and Icelandair announced an interline partnership allowing travelers to travel on one cohesive ticket from destinations in each other’s network. This is different from a codeshare agreement which requires more cooperation and collaboration on routes, destinations, and capacity.
“Our first interline partner carrier will be Icelandair, and Customers will be able to book and travel on partner itineraries beginning February 13, 2025. We will begin by operating interline itineraries available to book on Icelandair’s website and channels. Eventually, we will also offer booking on Southwest.com.
Rapid Rewards Members who add their account number to their reservation will be able to earn Rapid Rewards® points, tier qualifying points and flight segments, and Companion Pass qualifying points and flight segments on the Southwest Airlines-operated portion of a partner reservation.
Points will be earned as follows:
-
-
1-1000 miles flown = 500 Points
-
1,001-1,800 miles flown = 1,000 Points
-
1,801+ miles flown = 1,500 Points” – Southwest Airlines
-
This is not the first airline partnership for Southwest who previously worked with WestJet in a limited capacity.
Overlaying the two carriers’ route network creates some obvious gateway cities beginning with Baltimore/Washington, Nashville International Airport, and Denver International Airport. Southwest can feed clients into these hubs naturally to join Icelandair on the same booking itinerary. While all three have strong connections from other foreign carriers. Denver and Nashville will be interesting starting points because Nashville has relatively little trans-Atlantic competition while Denver has a substantial volume.
Is It Better For One Than The Other?
Southwest Airlines touches nearly every Metropolitan Statistical Area of meaningful size in the US, and major leisure destinations in the Caribbean. Icealandair operates to far fewer destinations in Europe but many of which have a larger population and tourism draw. The question is who benefits more from this agreement, Icelandair or Southwest?
I think it’s unquestionably better for Southwest and here’s why. Southwest fliers in Reno, Omaha, Jacksonville that want to see the Eiffel Tower for an important life milestone would normally have to shop outside of the carrier. Now, the same airline that they use to meet customers and see family around the states can be the carrier they use to fly across the water. There will be more demand from Southwest loyalists in mid to smaller markets than Icelandair will have from large European markets to take them to those cities.
This could also make the Southwest Airlines credit cards more valuable in time, though I suspect that its famed Companion Pass redemptions won’t be valid for trans-Altantic flights. Hopefully we will know more before the end of February 2025.
When Will It Be Ready On Southwest.com?
Southwest has said only that the agreement goes into effect this week, February 13th, 2025 and that booking on Southwest.com will come later. However, it’s hard to gauge the amount of Southwest clients – true loyalists – will choose to book with Southwest on a blended itinerary to Europe.
In theory, the partnership has a lot of promise. JetBlue is already doing some of the connection work for Icelandair by handling the US side of the equation and getting clients to mutual gateways like Boston, and New York JFK. But JetBlue also has its own flights to Europe, so some clients will start at JetBlue for their purchase anyway and later decide if Icelandair offers the product they are looking for in a given destination.
Southwest customers have been trained over decades to see the airline as a primarily US-centric airline operating the lower 48 and expanding to Hawaii just a few years ago, limited Caribbean destinations earlier in the last decade. It still doesn’t fly to Canada. That doesn’t mean that Southwest loyalists stay solely in the system, many book travel to Europe – just not with Southwest.
The company is overcoming its archaic computer system and that could be one of the reasons interlined flights won’t be initially available. But by March, many travelers from the US heading to Europe will have secured their tickets and summer is, of course, the busiest season. Onward from Europe to US destinations wherein IcelandAir is feeding Southwest will also rely on a critical rollout period, we simply don’t know when that is.
Conclusion
Southwest stands to steal back some of the ground it has ceded to other carriers for trans-Atlantic traffic while helping Icelandair reach more US communities without expanding its fleet. I believe that Southwest customers (and the airline) will gain more from the partnership but time will tell.
What do you think?
You should take a look at the southwest companion pass group on FB that I am a member of. A majority of members fully expects to use their companion pass on Icelandair to fly across the Atlantic. It’s insane. That’s not how the airline industry works
Iceland is a good place , with friendly people .
You seemed to be focused on whether U.S. travelers will use this interline. Why so one sided? The reality is that Europeans use Icelandair equally as much and it should feed originating EU traffic onto WN flights in perhaps even greater numbers. That is of course if there is anyone left who would actually want to travel to the U.S. for leisure.
Isn’t this going to be an extra stop for just about every one of those pax in tier-3 cities (said with no condescension intended as a Boise native myself)? I feel like Southwest-Iceland Air would have to be MUCH cheaper than legacy carriers to get someone to fly, for example, BOI-DEN-KEF-CDG vs any of the many alternative one-stop itineraries to CDG. Given the way WN has been pricing vs the big 3 for the last few years, I’m not sure I see that happening
I was thinking the same thing.
Who wouldn’t want to fly RNO-BNA-KEF-CDG in economy?