The Voyage Home

The view from our room – a vast moss covered lava field. Just amazing!

The trip back to Valhalla Land was both annoying as all fucking hell and not quite as bad as expected. Coulda been worse...and shit.

The WOW airline team continued to wow us with their appalling customer service skills as well as their dearth of consistency and common sense. I wonder, does WOW follow the Trump biz model? Ya know, don’t pay your employees a decent wage and, if possible, don’t pay them at all. What else could be the reason for the crew's surly sullenness?

After we got our boarding passes, we had to pass the “is your bag too big for the overhead” test. Makes sense BUT carry on bags which had been AOK-dandyy/no-extra-cost on the way from Boston to Iceland, were now deemed too big. Yes, they’d fit, they were cool to bring on board BUT… Jen had to pay another $40 for her very reasonable sized wheelie bag. The couple in front of us? They paid another $80 for their’s which, best I could tell, was the same size as Jen’s. Possibly they liked something about Jen (who wouldn’t – honestly?!), hence the lower tariff?

What is this WOW feeling they speak of? Could it be the feeling of being
treated like  factory farmed livestock? Also, a company who can’t be
arsed to pay decent graphic designers and printers (fonts defaulting to Courier?
 Christ on Comic Sans, how laughably 4th rate can you get?!) are really flying
their dimwitted rapaciousness flag just a bit too proudly to survive.

The plane, 30 minutes late already, was further delayed by yet another phalanx of bag checkers. Yes, the entire flight full of folk had already been subjected to the will it fit or won’t it test, had passed, or passed and paid a penalty, and now we had to jump through this hoop again?! ‘the fuck?

The other interesting (and by “interesting” I mean stupid-as-all-hell and how-dim-can-you-be!?) bit. Boarding wasn’t done from rear of plane to front AND there was no early boarding for, ya know, people who need extra time – families with babies and toddlers, wheelchair types and the chronically claustrophobic and balance impaired (moi, don’cha know).

Knowing we’d, inflight, be charged for even a cup of water, Jen and I had bought bottled H2O as well as sandwiches, sushi and wee bottles of Malbec. We were smart and all set, right? As we settled in, an announcement came – opening and quaffing our duty-free bought vino was verboten. Jen relayed this hilarious info as we unscrewed our minikin bottles and whipped out our straws (cups would’ve cost money and blown our cover).

Last view of our beloved lagoon before hopping on the airport bus

The two good bits – while my seat selection was once again wrong/NOT what I chose when I’d booked, I had a window seat (the gentleman sitting there asked to switch to aisle and I, naturally and oh-so-graciously assented) and there was actual leg room on this bird. Legroom and seat selection seem to be a total crapshoot on WOW.

Jen was listening to what our fellow passengers were buzzing about before and after both our flights. The phrase she heard most often? I will never fly this airline again!

Yup, agreed. I’ve had better Greyhound bus experiences. BUT, here’s the thing – the price difference between WOW and the next carrier is pretty huge. Boston to Reykjavik on WOW was $345 versus $585 on Iceland Air. That could very possibly make the difference between the trip being affordable or not. Also, would Iceland Air be worth the extra $240 we’d have to shell out? I checked the Trip Advisor site – they get good reviews. Most folks rated them Excellent or Very Good. Also too, I’ve flown them before and had tremendous experiences. WOW on the other hand gets more people voting their experience as Terrible versus Excellent or even Very Good. 

So, seems clear to me – for my next Iceland visit I’m going to have to cut some corners and save more shekels so’s I can afford a better, not rabidly incompetent airline.