TF-FIU — better known to travellers and plane spotters as Hekla Aurora, the Icelandair 757 hand-painted with the northern lights — has been dismantled and reduced to scrap at a teardown facility. There was no museum rescue: technicians first stripped the two Rolls-Royce RB211 engines, landing gear and other sellable parts, then cut the airframe apart.

The jet started life far from Iceland. Built at Boeing's Renton factory in July 1994, it flew for a decade with Iberia before Icelandair bought it in 2004 for North Atlantic routes out of Keflavík. In late 2014 the airline picked this particular aircraft for something unusual: a team of airbrush artists applied three layers of shimmering green, purple and blue paint by hand, and engineers fitted an LED cabin system that projected dancing auroras across the ceiling. The transformed jet flew on February 4, 2015 — a launch celebrated by lighting Reykjavík's Hallgrímskirkja church green — and became the centrepiece of Icelandair's famous stopover campaign, drawing crowds and social media attention at airports on both sides of the Atlantic.

Keeping a hand-painted aircraft flying is expensive. The delicate gradients needed touch-ups after every heavy maintenance check, and once the airframe hit its third decade, a major structural check plus engine overhauls would cost far more than the plane was worth. Fuel economics sealed it: Icelandair's 737 MAX 8s and incoming Airbus A321LRs burn up to 30% less fuel per seat. The 757 made its final flight, number 1100 out of Reykjavik Airport, on October 12, 2025, joining the Vatnajökull glacier-liveried jet retired just weeks earlier.

For Icelandair, the fleet question now shifts to Airbus. The 757 had no true replacement — its mix of power and range let it reach deep into North America from short runways — so the airline has ordered A321LR and A321XLR jets, with deliveries running through 2029. The XLR's range should let Iceland serve the US West Coast year-round.

For travellers, this is a small but telling marker of how airline marketing is changing. A single hand-painted plane helped sell an entire country's tourism for a decade; vinyl wraps and standardised liveries don't carry the same magic. If you flew the aurora jet across the Atlantic, you were part of one of aviation's best branding ideas. Whether Icelandair paints another flagship — perhaps one of the new Airbuses — is now the big question. Otherwise, Hekla Aurora remains a one-off.

Story via Simple Flying.