Whaling detrimental to Icelandair

The Managing Director of Icelandair. Jón Karl Ólafsson, has declared his opposition to whaling and says that it could do a great deal of harm to the airline. The company received its first major cancellation yesterday from a travel agency. Icelandair has suffered a lot of hate mail and opposition abroad due to Iceland's whaling. Ólafsson believes that the Governmen's decision was badly thought out and that they did not take into consideration the hundreds of million Icelandic kronas generated by the Icelandic travel industry annually.

The Icelandic association of whale watching companies have also condemned the decision to start commercial whaling and have challenged Sturla Böðvarsson, Minister for Tourism to ask for the decision to be reconsidered. The Icelandic ambassador in London was asked a second time to meet Ben Bradshaw, Britain's Minister of Fisheries, where Bradshaw once again stressed the British Govermnent's opposition to Iceland's whaling.