Iceland’s Isavia expects almost 100% of 2019 traffic later in 2022, but it's not all plain sailing

Many European countries are experiencing a swift return of passengers to the routes their airlines are flying as the coronavirus pandemic continues to abate and is no longer the first item on the television evening news - if it features at all.

That is the case in Iceland, which was locked down and isolated internationally for long periods of time in 2020 and 2021 but where, according to the airports' operator Isavia, capacity, passenger numbers and tourism will all return to 2019 levels, or close to those levels, by the third quarter of the year.

But this is 2022, not 2019, and no assumptions should be made as to what passes for normal.

There are potentially circumstances, both operational ones and sociological ones, which could yet impede that resumption of normal service.