Last night we booked our flights to Iceland’s Keflavik Airport (KEF), which is the main International Airport for Iceland. The airport is located about 52 km from Reykjavik, the Capital of Iceland largest city.
We had initially been waiting to book flights because we were too far out in calendar days for the return flight when we booked our campervan. We had to just pick some dates for the campervan rental. Since it is typically less expensive to travel on a Tuesday/Wednesday, we chose to start the trip on Tuesday, August 6, 2024, arriving in Iceland the next morning, August, 7, which it also the start of our campervan rental period.
What we were not sure of was the return flight date. This was partially driven by not being able to see pricing for the return flights until we were within the 333 calendar day flight reservation period for the return flight.
We were actually able to see return flights about 16 days ago, and the pricing seemed high, averaging between $1,200 to $1,400 per person for round trip flights. The only airlines offering any real choices were Delta and United.
We tried several combinations of round trip flights and one-way flights to compare pricing. We looked at splitting the trip into two on-way flights to see if we could reduce the price and or get better connections than we could get picking round trip flights. As we have posted for a couple of other trips, since COVID happened, the two one-way flights are sometimes the same price as round trip flights, but we can split between airlines to possibly get better overall flight and connection times.
Unfortunately, only having two airlines to choose from did not provide a lot of choices, and it was not an advantage to try and book one-way flights over round trips.
This week, while looking at flights again, I decided to compare the flights both leaving from Columbia, our “home” airport, and from nearby airports. The Delta Airlines website makes this easy, you just check a box, and it shows all of the nearby airports and their cheapest total fares. In this instance, it was significantly cheaper to fly out of either Charleston or Charlotte. We chose Charlotte by default since it is a little closer than Charleston, and a major hub airport, and the pricing between the two was negligible. However, the pricing in comparison to leaving from Colombia was significant.
After we made the decision to leave and return out of Charlotte, we needed to make a comparison between returning on a Saturday versus the following Sunday. It was slightly more expensive to return on Sunday, but only by $75.00 per person. However, this would allow us to spend a coupe of nights in the city of Reykjavik after dropping ff the campervan near the Keflavik Airport. We had already decided not to try and navigate through the city in the campervan, we would just bypass our visit there during the campervan rental and go there afterward. In addition, we just thought it was going to be too difficult to get everything together the day of the campervan return to go directly to a return flight, especially of we needed to catch an early departure. In the end, our round trip flight cost was $995 per person, and we were happy about that. The comparison of similar flights originating and returning to Colombia would have cost around $1,427.00 per person, so the total savings was about $865.00 dollars. And for that higher cost, we were arriving back in Columbia at around 10:00 PM and had two connections, adding about 6-7 hours to the overall flight durations on both ends. It will be worth the extra less than two hour drive time to Charlotte for that amount of savings, and our return flight to Charlotte arrives at 3:42 PM.
The last decision we needed to make was which flight to choose between two options Delta had for the flights to Iceland. They both connect through JFK Airport, and the flight from JFK to KEF was the same for both, arriving in Iceland at 9:15 AM. The choices were strictly about the flight from Charlotte to JFK. One choice was leaving Charlotte at 5:20 PM, and the other was a flight leaving Charlotte at 7:30 PM. The difference of two hours and ten minutes was reflected on the layovers at JFK. We evaluated traffic concerns for both departure times, and since it is on a Tuesday, we knew there would be some traffic impacts in Charlotte for arriving at the airport for the later departure time, and possibly some in Columbia also. The only attractive aspect of the later departure was the shorter layover time of one hour, forty-five minutes.
In the end, we opted for the conservative approach and selected the 5:20 PM departure from Charlotte over the later 7:30 PM departure time. We could have just left earlier for the later departure time and waited in the Charlotte airport longer, but if there was some delay in our CLT to JFK flight, that would have more of n impact with the later departure’s shorter layover time. We now that these International flights are usually only once per night, so missing the flight to Iceland greatly impacts the trip. We will just enjoy the longer layover in JFK and possibly get a light dinner before we leave there. That is better than worrying about making a connection. Plus, for the earlier 5:20 PM fight, we would be leaving in the early afternoon to drive to Charlotte, missing most all of the traffic in both Columbia and Charlotte.
We then looked at various ways to get to Charlotte from Columbia, trying to see if there were less costly alternatives to long term parking at Charlotte for the duration of the trip, which is now officially 20 days in overall duration. Of course, we would also have had to pay for parking if we left from Columbia, we just no longer have any good options for rides to the airport since neither of our mom’s are driving any longer. For this duration of a trip, we may have considered using Uber since the flight times we not too early or late, but the savings to leave from Charlotte were just too great to overcome.
Stephanie found a shuttle service to Charlotte from Columbia, which cost $30 per person, each way. It is a shared ride service, and apparently picks us up from our house. What was not apparent was the time we needed to be ready to leave to make our flights, including all of the pick-up time for outer passengers. While she was looking into that, I looked to see if we could rent a car from Enterprise at one of the local offices, and drop it off at the Charlotte Airport. That was only about $90.00 for the rental from Columbia to Charlotte, so in comparison to the shared shuttle, taking a shuttle driver tip into consideration, while a little more expensive, we were in control of our time, and the local Enterprise rental office is only a few miles from us.
It was getting late last night, so we called it a night for trying to plan how to get to Charlotte until tomorrow.
This morning, I was able to get more information on long term parking at the Charlotte Airport, that was our benchmark for trying to figure out alternatives. The long term parking at Charlotte is not badly priced, just $10.00 per day for Lot 1 or Lot 2. With a whopping online discount of $2.02, parking for the trip was just about $198.00 for the trip.
I was also able to determine that the rental car return from Charlotte to Columbia was not nearly as affordable as the Columbia to Charlotte rental. The cheapest we could get for an intermediate car, even through Costco Travel, was about $255 for using the same Lexington city office as the drop-off location. Highway robbery!. I also looked at returning the car to the Columbia Airport, and it was significantly lower at $131.00, but not nearly as convenient because now we need to either drive over to the airport after we get home, or Uber from the airport if we more conveniently drop off the car on the way home from Charlotte. Plus, the overall rental car cost will be $222 for both rentals. If we Uber, that adds about $25 to that cost. Still not a lot higher than the airport parking cost, but it keeps us from having to drive our older cars to Charlotte and worry about reliability.
I went ahead and made car reservations through Costco Travel for the two rentals to and from Charlotte, but will monitor them over time for any price drops. At least we are set. We will still be evaluating our options, who knows, maybe we will have a new vehicle by then, we have been considering that recently since our cars are now 22 and 21 years old. But all we generally do is drive them around town, and they have been reliable so far, but it is probably time.
The last planning effort for today was to look at hotels for the end of the trip in Reykjavik. We will need to stay in Reykjavik for two nights after dropping off the campervan on Thursday morning. We will also need to rent a car near the airport so we can drive to Reykjavik, at least that is the plan now. I looked at a few hotels, but parking is not free at any of them, and ranges from Euro 0.70 per hour to Euro 10.00 per day to Euro 2.00 per hour (ouch). And, all of the parking is on the street. Rental cars are also fairly expensive, about $250.00 for the two days with “included” full insurance. The cost of the rental car and added parking may make taking a shuttle bus more affordable, we were not really planning in using the rental car to drive much other than to and from the airport to Reykjavik.
That was just a little overwhelming, so I opted to look into hotels near the Keflavik Airport. Our plan will be to stay overnight near the airport and just shuttle to the airport from the hotel Several hotels have free shuttles to the airport. I looked on Booking.com, our usual go-to for hotel and apartment rentals overseas, and found two different hotels that seemed close to the airport and offered free shuttle service. Well, it is not really free, for an average size room at most of the nearby airport hotels, a one night stay is about $270.00. There are just not many options, the airport is in a fairly remote side of Iceland, and only the hotels nearby are an option. Since we have a 8:50 AM flight departure, it just seemed too risky to stay another night in Reykjavik and drive to the airport, and deal with the car rental return that morning. Also, most of the rental car offices are off-site, and require a shuttle to the airport, adding more time before the flight. Plus, the cost of the rental car, added to the hotel cost for an additional night in Reykjavik would most likely offset the seemingly expensive hotel cost near the airport.
I decided to go ahead and make a reservation at the Konvin Hotel for a double bed room through Booking.com. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was able to get what Booking.com calls their 10% “genius” discount for having used them for so many rentals in the past. That made the room rate a total of $237.00 for our one night stay there. Here is a link to the Konvin Hotel website.
While we got a lot done in the last two days, there is still a lot of planning to do on our actual route and for picking our camping sites, but at least we have flights, and that anchors the trip dates. We still need to make some decisions going forward on finalizing our plan for getting to and from the Charlotte Airport and on our hotel for Reykjavik for two nights after we drop off the campervan.
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