So, PLAY Airlines is dead.
Anyone acting surprised by this needs to have their head examined. This isn't a tragedy; it's a rerun of a show we’ve all seen before, and the first season wasn’t even that good. Remember WOW Air? The airline that imploded in 2019, leaving a trail of purple-branded wreckage and stranded tourists all over the North Atlantic? PLAY was literally founded by the same brain trust. It was the cinematic sequel nobody asked for, built on the exact same cracked foundation.
And now, here we are. September 29, 2025. All flights canceled. The company issues a sad little notice on the stock exchange, stranding thousands of people and vaporizing around 500 jobs.
The Board of Directors, in their infinite wisdom, released a statement that’s a masterclass in corporate non-apology. They said the decision was made only after "all other options were deemed exhausted." Let me translate that for you from PR-speak into English: "We finally ran out of other people's money to burn."
Give me a break.
Selling "Optimism" While the Engines Were on Fire
The Panicked Scramble
Let's be real about what happened here. This wasn't a sudden storm; this was a slow-motion train wreck everyone saw coming. The company lost $66 million in 2024. Another $16 million down the drain in the second quarter of this year. Their stock value had cratered by 70% in less than a year. The writing wasn't on the wall; it was tattooed on the fuselage of every plane they operated.
Their big solution? A "pivot." That’s the magic word they all use.
Last fall, they announced a brilliant new strategy. They were going to ditch the ambitious, cash-hemorrhaging transatlantic model—the very thing that killed their last airline—and focus on short, sunny routes to Europe and the Canary Islands. It was a bad idea. No, 'bad' doesn't cover it—this was a five-alarm dumpster fire of a plan. It was an admission that their entire reason for existing was a failure.
They also started shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic, moving their back-office functions to Malta and Lithuania to shave a few bucks off the payroll. I’m sure that did wonders for the "internal discord" the board so delicately mentioned in their farewell note. They blame 'discord' as if the staff getting nervous about the company's death spiral is some kind of unreasonable rebellion, and honestly...
You can’t build a company culture when the founding principle is "let's try the same failed idea again, but cheaper."
The most insulting part? Just a few weeks ago, in August, CEO Einar Örn Ólafsson and his crew were still feeding the public lines about optimism and potential profitability in 2026. Were they delusional? Or were they just trying to keep the music playing long enough for the executives to find the lifeboats? You tell me.
The Vultures Call it a "Rescue"
A Rescue? Don't Make Me Laugh.
Now comes the cleanup. The airline's website, in its final act, tells stranded passengers to go beg their credit card companies for a refund. Good luck with that.
And offcourse, the vultures are circling. Icelandair and easyJet are swooping in with so-called "rescue fares." Some travel columnist says they’ll be around £50 or $100. How generous. It’s not a rescue; it’s opportunistic price-gouging disguised as charity. It reminds me of my cable company offering me a "special loyalty discount" that's still more expensive than the new customer rate. The whole system is a joke.
Unsurprisingly, Icelandair's stock shot up 30% on the news. An analyst, a guy named Sean Moulton, had the gall to say PLAY's collapse "will allow Icelandair to expand." It reduces competition, he says.
You don't say.
Removing a competitor reduces competition. What a stunning piece of insight. This is the world we live in: one company's spectacular failure, which screws over employees and customers, is celebrated as a growth opportunity for the monopoly left standing. It’s perfect. It’s capitalism in its purest, most brutal form.
This ain't a unique story. It’s a pattern. Primera Air in 2018. WOW Air in 2019. Now PLAY in 2025. The low-cost transatlantic model is a graveyard, and these guys were just the latest to buy a plot. They saw the flashing red lights and the warning signs from their own past failures and decided to speed right through the intersection anyway.
Then again, who am I to talk? I'm just a guy with a keyboard. I've never tried to run an airline. Maybe it really is an impossible business, a chaotic dance of fuel prices, exchange rates, and fickle tourists. Maybe they really did try their best.
Nah. They knew what they were doing.
The Sequel Was Worse, Imagine That ###
They tried to sell the world the same story twice. The first time it was a tragedy for WOW's employees and passengers. This time, for PLAY, it's just a farce. The only people who should be surprised are the investors who were dumb enough to buy a ticket for a ride they’d already seen crash and burn.
Reference article source：
- PLAY Airlines shuts down, cancels all flights
- From Iceland — Play Airlines Cease Operations
- PLAY Airlines cancels all flights with immediate effect
Tags: play airlines