aldakalda Googlie of the day on blog: “ice land air go bust”. You ser ri ous? Ho ly shit.

It’s a tweet that came across TwitHive earlier today. I immediately got on Google looking for confirmation. No stories. Perhaps the news hadn’t broken in English yet. So I posted it to Reddit to find out if it’d broken in Icelandic. Again, no confirmation.

However, it did spark a bit of debate about the airline.

In Iceland a company like Icelandair probably falls into the “to big to fail” group. I don’t think it would be allowed to go completely bust.

“Iceland Express, an established low-cost operator that already flies between Reykjavik and more than a dozen cities in continental Europe, has said it will start a trans-Atlantic service to Newark Liberty International Airport in June. The carrier will use its base in Reykjavik to enable connections to Newark from several cities, including London, Berlin and Warsaw, at fares that will be 30 to 40 percent cheaper than Icelandair, which already flies similar routes.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/business/global/24lowcost.html

Won’t be easy for Icelandair next year.

“Wicelander” // Reddit

What I was told, in part by people who used to work in Icelandair management, is that Icelandair had been making a tidy profit until the collapse, and under normal circumstances would be doing reasonably well after, too.

However, back in 2007 when everyone was insane, they formed the Icelandair Group investment company, sucked all the equity out of the airline and started gambling with it. Then they lost. So, Icelandair is the sort of company that is worth saving, since the actual airline is healthy. That’s if it actually needs saving.

“logi” // Reddit

If anyone can confirm or deny this about Icelandair, please let IcelandNews know.