Number of passengers at Keflavík Airport in Iceland 2009-2021

Although the number of passengers recorded at Keflavík International Airport located near Iceland’s capital Reykjavik increased over the last years until 2018, it declined in 2020 to less than 1.4 million due to the coronavirus pandemic. Nevertheless, Keflavík is by far the most popular airport in the Nordic country, based on the number of international passengers. Whereas nearly ten million people arrived at or departed from Keflavík in 2019, the number of international passengers at Reykjavík, Akureyri, and Egilsstaðir airports amounted to overall only about 44,000.

Most visitors came from the United States

According to a statistic from 2019, the leading nationality of visitors arriving at Keflavík International Airport, opened in 1943 by the U.S. Armed Forces, was the United States. Roughly 441,000 passengers were recorded from this country. The United Kingdom and Germany followed in second and third place.

Reason for falling passenger numbers

The reason for the decline of passenger numbers at Keflavík Airport is the end of operations of Iceland’s low-cost airline WOW air in the beginning of 2019. Its planes used this airport as a hub to reach destinations in Europe and North America.