Einar Orn Olafsson
Icelandic budget carrier PLAY has appointed current chairman Einar Örn Ólafsson as its new CEO.
Ólafsson, who is also the airline’s largest shareholder, will take over as CEO from Birgir Jónsson who is retiring from the role.
PLAY, which was created in 2019 following the demise of Wow Air, has been building up its transatlantic route network from its Reykjavik base to destinations in Europe and North America following the pandemic.
Ólafsson said: “After a great ramp-up phase these past few years under Birgir’s strong leadership, the company is now at a turning point. As the company’s largest shareholder, I’d like to see my investment through.
“I am very familiar with PLAY’s operations and employees and can see ample opportunities and exciting projects in the operation going forward.”
Jónsson will continue working for PLAY until 2 April and then will remain as an advisor to the airline for the “next few months”.
PLAY’s latest traffic statistics show that it carried just over 106,000 passengers in February, up by 66 per cent on February 2023, with load factor increasing by 4.1 percentage points year-on-year to 81 per cent for the month. This was even higher for PLAY’s Paris and Barcelona services where it filled more than 90 per cent of seats in February.
Connecting passengers travelling between Europe and North America via Reykjavik made up around one-third of the airline’s traffic (32 per cent) during the month.
PLAY is also adding new routes between Iceland and Europe including Vilnius in Lithuania on 25 May and Split in Croatia on 28 May.