Icelandair Boeing 757 in Anchorage. Photo by Brandon Farris.

Icelandair Boeing 757 (named Katia – reg TF-FIV) in Anchorage. Photo by Brandon Farris.

Who wants to fly from cold to not as cold? Now you easily can with Icelandair starting service from Anchorage to Iceland. Well, most passengers do not stop in Iceland, but continue with Icelandair to Europe. I had the opportunity to check out the inaugural flight celebrations recently on the ground in Anchorage.

An excitement filled the air when I walked through the doors at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC) as a new day was beginning with new service launching to Keflavik International Airport (KEF) with Icelandair. Anchorage has become the eighth US destination for Icelandair.

My Ride to LAX - A Qantas A380 named after Sir Reginald Duigan - Photo: Mal Muir - AirlineReporter.com

My Ride to LAX – A Qantas A380 named after Sir Reginald Duigan – Photo: Mal Muir – AirlineReporter.com

THIS IS A CONTINUATION OF PART 1 OF FLYING IN QATAS FIRST CLASS ON AN AIRBUS A380

After leaving the Qantas Lounge, I headed back downstairs into the terminal in Melbourne and boarded directly through the lower airbridge to the Airbus A380 heading to Los Angeles. It was hard for me to realize that this was really happening.  2.5 years of waiting and the moment was here; flying in first class on a Qantas A380.

I was greeted at door 2L and then turned left.  Left into happiness, left into exclusivity, left into REAL First Class.  Qantas has its First Class Suites on the lower deck of the A380 unlike Emirates, Lufthansa or Thai Airways which all have them on the upper deck.

A Korean Air Airbus A380 visits me at home

A Korean Air Airbus A380 visits me at home

For nearly my entire life, I have lived in the shadow of one of the busiest airports in the country. Draw a straight line from my house and you end up on JFKs runway 22L in almost 2 miles. Arrivals glide across the sky mere seconds from landing, while departures roar directly overhead. When people ask me “why are you so into aviation?” my answer should be “the real question is what took me so long?”

JFK and airplanes are a daily fact of life in this area. Most people are so used to A380s at 500 feet over their backyard, they don’t even look up. For many years of my life, I was one of these people. DC8s, 727s, 707s, Concorde, all the classics you might now find in a museum were all right over my head, but I just never looked up.