Support For Keeping Domestic Airport Where It Is Decreases

About 60% of Icelanders say they want the domestic airport to stay right where it is, in Reykjavík.

RÚV reports that, according to a new poll from Maskína, 59% of Icelanders support keeping the airport at Vatnsmýri. This shows a significant drop in support for moving the airport from the time of the last poll on the subject, in 2013, when 72% of respondents favoured keeping it where it is. Only 22% of respondents support moving the airport somewhere else.

As is almost always the case, people living in the countryside were more in support of keeping the airport where it is than people who actually live in Reykjavík.

This may be due to regional differences of opinion over the domestic airport’s location: conventional wisdom states that Icelanders in Reykjavík want the airport to move, on account of the noise of planes flying lower over the city, while Icelanders from the countryside want it to stay where it is, on account of the convenience of disembarking in downtown Reykjavík.

The poll may effect the outcome of a parliamentary proposal, submitted last November and co-signed by MPs hailing from every parliamentary party except the Independence Party and the Left-Greens, to move the airport.