Review: Icelandair 737 MAX 8 Saga Premium business class, Dublin to Reykjavik

I had always wanted to fly in Icelandair’s Saga Premium business class and finally the opportunity arose. The airline had a phenomenal sale out of Dublin, with the big seats priced at €299 return. There was no way I could let that pass me by, so I booked for a quick overnight stay.

While it may seem silly to visit Iceland for less than 24 hours, I had been there before. Back in 2005 I spent four nights in the country, touring around and seeing all the sights, so I didn’t need to do it again. I will say I highly recommend Iceland, it’s like nowhere else on earth and well worth a visit.

The Saga Premium Cabin

The good people at Dublin Airport are renovating their main lounge during the quiet winter period. This means no lounge access before flight, so I arrived at the airport about an hour before departure, breezed through Fast-Track security and headed for the gate.

FI417 – Dublin to Reykjavik (DUB-KEF)
16 January 2026
Boeing 737 MAX 8 – TF-ICE – Jökulsárlón
Seat: Saga Premium 1A
Departure: 11:30 Arrival: 14:10

After a short 20 minute or so wait, boarding was called and I happened to be first on the aircraft. This meant I had the opportunity to get pictures prior to all the seats being filled by other passengers.

Sitting down, I found the seats to be ultra comfortable, which was a welcome surprise. No trashy middle seat free Euro-business here, these are gorgeous seats and are made for relaxation. I sipped at my welcome water while waiting for boarding to finish up.

Safety cards and headphones

To pass the time I had a bit of a look at the safety card, which held no surprises. Soon, the crew came through offering headphones and as I planned to watch a movie I took a set. These are decent enough noise cancelling ones, which is good to see.

Once everyone was on board, we had the video safety demonstration. This comprises of various Icelandic landscapes and scenes slightly modified to give the demo. It’s kinda strange, but does the job. Soon enough we headed for the sky and set course for Keflavik.

The Drinks Menu

I’ve never come across an airline that has a drinks menu that is far more substantial than the one for dining. As you can see there are plenty of options on Icelandair.

I started with the bubbles, but had my eye firmly set on the large selection of gin. Considering many of them were local to Iceland, I figured I’d give them all a bit of a try.

Lunch is served!

While it may seem from the pictures above that the menus are delivered together, that is far from the truth. The menu is on the tray as it’s delivered. Intriguingly, the crew said, “you must be the guy who chose the fish” when I passed by on my visit to the toilet. I was baffled as there had been no discussion about food with me, so I replied I wasn’t the one who asked for fish.

The clear standout for me, amazingly, was the whipped butter with Icelandic blueberry salt to put on the bread. Outrageously delicious, so much so that I bought the salt in the airport on the way back. The arancini, chicken dish and dessert were all very good as well, of course. Once done, I plugged in my headphones to watch the movie F1.

Not by the hair of my ginny-gin-gin!

By now it was time to try the Saga Premium Gin Library, four of the five were Icelandic and one wasn’t. In the end, I tried three of the four Icelandic gins.

All of them were quite delicious, with the last one being handed to me 13 minutes before landing. For a change I had landing gin instead of landing Champagne and that is okay. After that, we arrived in Keflavik without further ado.

Overall Thoughts

Icelandair’s Saga Premium business class is very good indeed. There is plenty of up to date entertainment available on the system, with decent noise cancelling headphones. My only gripe there is that there are ads about Iceland before the presentation and weirdly also as one of the flips in the moving map, which was tiresome.

Lunch was substantial, with some cool Icelandic touches such as the blueberry salt. Drinks wise, you can’t really go wrong as there’s something for everyone. It’s fantastic to see so many local products showcased, plus the crew were very obliging and friendly. Overall, a pretty faultless flight, which made me happy.

Have you flown Icelandair? What do you think of it after this report? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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Featured image by MarcelX42 via Wikimedia Commons.