The airspace of Iceland presents a number of operational and safety challenges for Avians (formerly Isavia), the country’s Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP), to address. Avians manages two Flight Information Regions (FIR) — Reykjavik and the upper airspace of Nuuk — which covers 5.4 million square kilometers of airspace, most of it polar and/or oceanic. 

Avians’ airspace extends from the North Pole to Scotland and from the prime meridian in Greenwich to west of Greenland. Over a quarter of all air traffic crossing the North Atlantic passes through the area managed by Avians in the Reykjavik Area Control Center (ACC). Given the proximity to the North Pole and that a large portion of the airspace is out of range of ground networks, space-based ADS-B from Aireon has proven to be a great safety improvement for the area and service provided there. 

Avians first went operational with Aireon data in 2021 in the country’s southern airspace, before expanding the service in 2022 to the entire airspace, and then again in 2025 with operational use of the data from the ground to 60,000 feet.