IEX ♥ USA

Our flight was 2 and a half hours late. This turned out to be the beginning of an experience...

First, let me say that being delayed was quite fortuitous for my roomie whose connecting flights from Dalls, TX, ran super late. Second, I enjoyed the bonding experience with both the members of my choir and with other passengers, Icelandic or otherwise. It was here that we gained the valuable knowledge of conditioning hair at the Blue Lagoon and ate free food provided by the airline (this later became a snack on my hike).

Here's the cool part of my story. Our flight out of Newark was the inaugural flight. I verified with Wikipedia, obviously the most trustworthy source ever. But for real, I talked with the pilot, a friendly fellow from the UK, while we waited for our plane to arrive. He gave me the low down on why our plane was delayed and what the woo was happening on the tar mac later on in my story.

The Department of Homeland Security requires each U.S.-bound airline to send a manifest of passengers three days in advance for approval/review. Since it was the first flight to Newark from Iceland, about 20 or so people weren't in the system. They manually had to have their information entered in and approved by Homeland Security, hence the delay. It was also rumored that the owner of Iceland Express was on board. Nothing major, just an awesome bit of info I picked up. (Check me out going all investigatory journalist, ha!)

Soooooo the woo I whatted on the tar mac... It was the inaugural flight from Newark to Iceland and apparently there are traditions to be upheld. Two fire trucks made an appearance on the tar mac about 10 minutes before our plane landed. As the plane rolled up to the gate, the trucks blasted water into the air creating an arch through which the plane went. It was quite a sight to see- I felt like I was a part of history. Hooray! In fact, the plane had no identifying decals or branding on it (see plane wing to the left), that's how legit our flight was.

The flight (only $610 round trip!) was 4 hours and 55 minutes long, and glorious. Glorious because the plane wasn't full so I got to stretch out across 3 seats and sleep. I also had my luck repeat in the same fashion for the return flight :) As we came in for landing, the view out the window showed nothing but a coastline and a brown, desolate landscape that looked like the surface of the moon.

Velkomin til Íslands!