Icelandair's near-monopoly on the North Atlantic's most underrated hub route makes St. Louis to Reykjavík business class a surprisingly rewarding niche for connoisseurs of efficient travel: there's no nonstop from STL, so the real strategy lies in choosing your connection wisely. Most itineraries route through Minneapolis, Chicago, or New York, pairing Delta One's lie-flat suites — complete with sliding doors on the A330 and A350 fleet — with a shorter Icelandair Saga Class hop into Keflavík, or funneling through United's hubs in Newark or Chicago aboard their Polaris seats before transferring to FI's widebody service. Total journey time typically lands around 10-12 hours including connections, though the final KEF sector itself runs roughly 7 hours block-to-block depending on routing and winds.
Having threaded this connection more times than I can count, my strongly held preference is routing through Boston or New York-JFK on Delta, since both offer Icelandair's own metal on the transatlantic leg — meaning one consistent Saga Class product with proper lie-flat seating on the 767 fleet, rather than switching cabin philosophies mid-journey. Icelandair's Saga Class isn't as lavish as Qatar's QSuite or Delta One Suites, but it's a comfortable, no-fuss lie-flat experience with attentive Nordic service, and KEF's compact terminal makes onward connections to continental Europe refreshingly painless — arrive with at least 90 minutes if you're continuing to Copenhagen or Paris, since immigration can bottleneck during peak summer waves. My insider tip: book the extended Saga Class fare rather than standard Saga when available, as it includes lounge access and priority everything for a modest incremental cost, and during May through September, Icelandair sometimes releases last-minute upgrade space on the STL-adjacent hub flights that rarely shows up in standard search engines.
Because this route's business class inventory is thin and prone to sudden fare drops around shoulder-season months, setting up automated fare tracking for St. Louis to Reykjavík business class itineraries is genuinely the smartest move you can make before booking.
