Icelandair Promises You The Northern Lights
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Icelandair is promising its passengers a guaranteed Northern Lights experience. The airline isn’t claiming power over the very heavens – but it offers the next-best thing.
The Aurora Borealis looms over Iceland during the dark winters, delighting locals and taking visitors’ breath away. The aurora is the result of solar winds pounding the Earth’s magnetosphere, but it sure looks like ancient magic.
Icelandair has bottled that magic for its #MyStopover campaign: Passengers to Reykjavik can be treated to an auroral light-show as they fly to the land of the Sagas.
The Hekla (Icleandair’s planes are named after the island nation’s numerous volcanoes) has been rechristened as the Hekla Aurora. Its custom livery reflects the Northern Lights, but the experience doesn’t stop there.
A custom cabin-lighting system allows the flight crew to treat its passengers to a bespoke Aurora Borealis as a welcoming gesture.
Hekla Aurora is WiFi-enabled so passengers can Instagram their awe and share their experience with friends and family who aren’t lucky enough to be flying to a country full of natural hot spring baths and impossibly well-groomed horses.
- Icelandic horses. Image by Michelle Lee, Creative Commons
On February 5, Hekla Aurora first took a lap over the Hallgrimskirkja (whose imposing face was lit up for the Winter Lights Festival), before landing and inviting the public aboard.
Inaugural flight of the hekla aurora! #matsiceland #icelandair #MyStopover pic.twitter.com/AfSgtoMR2Z
— manon (@MtenHave24) February 5, 2015
The Hekla Aurora first flew out of Birmingham Airport, and has since been making the rounds in Europe and the United States. The schedule has been kept relatively secret: You’ll only know if you’re aboard the Hekla Aurora within a few days of your flight. In taking advantage of the #MyStopover campaign, you can lay over in Iceland for up to a week with no extra charge.