Low-Cost Pioneer Was 87

If you've ever been cramped into a too-small seat on a trans-Atlantic super-saver fare, you may thank Sigurdur Helgason. And we sincerely mean that.

Helgason, who passed away February 8 at the age of 87, revolutionized low-cost airline travel in the 1960s. His airline, Loftleidir, started budget airline flights from the US to Scandinavia, via Iceland, in 1955. In the early 1960s, the airline started service to Luxembourg... which may seem like an odd destination at first, but since Luxembourg had no national flag carrier to call its own, it was the only European country to allow Icelandic flights to land there.

Icelandic wasn't known for its luxury... and that was precisely the point. During the dawn of the jet age and the birth of speedy travel between he United States and Europe, Icelandic puttered along -- figuratively, and literally -- with a fleet of cramped turboprop airliners. By the end of the 1960s, the carrier had graduated to a fleet of Douglas DC-8 turbojets... but held onto its slogan, "We're Slow But We're Low."

It was a mindset the counter-culture, "Flower Children" generation responded to. By the end of the decade, Icelandic was known as the "hippie airline," where the odd whiff of marijuana smoke in the cabin wouldn't necessarily raise any eyebrows. For that and other reasons, the cramped single-class cabins appealed to the hostel crowd... particularly since the ultra-low fares also included decadent meal selections, along with complimentary wine and cognac.

"We traveled in style even though it was the cheapest flight across the Atlantic," Sigurdur's daughter Edda Helgason told The New York Times.

By the start of the 1970s, Icelandic had garnered two percent of the trans-Atlantic market... and did so with the apparent ire of the International Air Transport Association, which collectively frowned upon Icelandic's unorthodox approach. While Helgason was CEO of Icelandic, the airline eventually had as many as five daily departures from New York... and opened up Iceland to a new generation of travelers and tourists.

Helgason didn't start Icelandic -- the airline was started by three pilots in 1944. Helgason, then manager of a cement company, joined the Board of Directors in 1953, and by 1961 he was head of the airline's US operations. When Icelandic Airlines merged with another, smaller airline and became Icelandair in 1973, Helgason returned as CEO... a position he stayed in until 1984, when he became chairman of the board. He retired from the airline in 1991.

Today, Icelandair has lost much of its counter-culture appeal, but still carries "five times the population of Iceland," in the words of Helgason's now-retired successor (who is also named Sigurdur Helgason.)

That translates to some 1.6 million passengers annually, and marks Icelandic's success as the only low-cost airline at the time to have survived today.

FMI: www.icelandair.com