Icelandair has announced it will withdraw services from Detroit in January 2026, marking its first exit from a US airport since 2020.
The move comes despite the United States being the airline’s largest market from its Keflavik hub.
According to the US Department of Transportation, 1.55 million passengers flew with Icelandair between the two countries in 2024 — the carrier’s strongest year on record.
The airline has steadily grown its American network in recent years, with Nashville joining its route map in 2025 and Miami set to follow this winter.
However, Detroit flights, which had been scheduled to operate up to five times a week next summer with Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, have now been cancelled.
The decision leaves Delta Air Lines as the sole operator on the Detroit–Reykjavik route.
Both carriers launched services in May 2023, but with Icelandair stepping back, questions remain over whether Delta will maintain its daily Boeing 757 operation.
Since 1990, Icelandair has carried nearly 20 million passengers to and from the US. Last year, the airline filled 83.6% of its available seats on transatlantic services — relatively modest by industry standards but still reflecting record demand.
The carrier has a history of bold experimentation in the American market. Between 2017 and 2019, competition from the now-defunct WOW Air briefly drove Icelandair’s traffic higher, though at the expense of profitability, with load factors falling to their lowest levels in over a decade.
Over the years, Icelandair has withdrawn from ten US airports, including a short-lived service to Kansas City.
While the city saw an estimated 230,000 passengers travel to and from Europe in 2024 across all airlines, it proved an ambitious — if ultimately unsustainable — addition for the Icelandic flag carrier.
