Talk about high-jinks. On Sept. 8, Icelandair staged an 11-hour live and interactive performance for passengers flying from London to New York.
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The show, titled Ahead of Time, starred Icelandair staff as well as actors from London theatre group Gideon Reeling. It started at check-in at Heathrow airport and concluded at JFK International in New York, including a layover performance in Reykjavik.
“Our program aims to transform wasted time while travelling into time well-travelled,” Icelandair CEO Birkir Hólm Guðnason said to NBC News. “We’re pleased to pioneer a new form of entertainment and value-added service for passengers.”
The play was a publicity stunt to celebrate the airline’s 80th anniversary, as well as an opportunity to tease a new program called Stopover Pass. Transatlantic passengers flying through Iceland can choose to stop over in the country for up to seven nights at no additional cost, and they can enter to win a Stopover Pass that allows them to take in a special cultural event in Reykjavik during their stay, including concerts, sporting events and stand-up comedy.
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Ahead of Time was a one-off performance (although they may stage more in the future) that tracked the airline’s history through lead character “Edda,” who highlighted Icelandair’s progressive philosophy through themes of female empowerment. (Icelandair was the first airline to feature an all-female crew in 2001.)
Passengers were regaled with entertainment that started with a modern ballet performance at the boarding gate and continued as a passage through the decades throughout the flight. Among the time-warped characters were a 1950s air hostess, hippies on their way to Woodstock, and a grunge-era backpacker. The time travel theme was rounded out with retro sing-a-longs and a ’50s-inspired menu.
The interactive element of the performance would undoubtedly interfere with the plans of passengers who normally use a long-haul flight to catch up on work or sleep, and Telegraph reporter Gavin Haines, had his doubts. But ultimately, he chalked the experience up to good old-fashioned entertainment.
“I thought it would be awful. It wasn’t,” he wrote. “In fact, as the actors moved around the cabin, regaling passengers with their stories, I was genuinely entertained. I liked the theme of female empowerment, as championed by the carrier, which ran through it. Truthfully, I don’t remember having more fun on a flight.”
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