A few days ago, D.C. resident Eric Fidler heard from his brother that Icelandic budget airline WOW Air had to cancel flights after two of its aircrafts were repossessed.

“That was a bit of a red flag,” says Fidler, who had booked a late May trip to Iceland through WOW. “I was like, ‘oh no, it’s going to happen again.'” He says “again” because it wouldn’t be the first time a budget airline went kaput on him. He also had a trip to London booked through Primera, the Danish low-cost airline that abruptly suspended its service in October, leaving passengers and crew stranded.

After Primera went bust, Fidler ultimately used WOW to get to London in January without issue. So when he and a friend went to book their flights for a vacation in Iceland this spring, he took note of the airline’s non-stop daily flights from BWI to Reykjavik. “WOW was the cheapest and I took them in January just fine, so we planned out the trip,” he says. They booked lodging, ferries to remote locations, and a rental car, much of it non-refundable.

And then, on Thursday morning, Fidler learned that WOW wouldn’t be taking him to Iceland after all. The airline announced overnight that it had ceased operation and cancelled all of its flights, including its daily, non-stop service between BWI and Reykjavik.

“Passengers are advised to check available flights with other airlines,” the company’s travel alert reads. “Some airlines may offer flights at a reduced rate, so-called rescue fares, in light of the circumstances.”

WOW had “run out of time,” Chairman Skuli Mogensen wrote in a letter to employees that said the airline’s inability to secure additional funding caused the shutdown. The airline, which flew between North America and Europe, launched in 2012 and began serving BWI in 2015. It carried 3.5 million total passengers in 2018, per Reuters, including 30 percent of tourists visiting Iceland. In early 2019, WOW announced it would drop many of the cities from its route map, but continued operating out of BWI. It was eighth on a list of airlines at BWI ranked by number of passengers, according to Baltimore Business Journal.

While Fidler has to figure out how and if he’s heading to Iceland later this spring, other WOW passengers at BWI and elsewhere are stranded in transit. “The airline’s last arrival was last evening,” BWI spokesperson Jonathan Dean told DCist on Thursday. “The departing flight to Iceland was canceled.” He adds that the airline doesn’t have specific numbers on how many passengers were left without flights.

https://twitter.com/suheradi/status/1111106019063709697

https://twitter.com/dcrre/status/1111106410203488256

https://twitter.com/lylarodriguez24/status/1111138874275889152

As of this morning, the check-in counter for WOW at BWI appeared eerily abandoned.

https://twitter.com/wbaljfro/status/1111226778494951430

Fidler says he has already disputed the charged for the now-nonexistent flight with his credit card company, and says the people he spoke with on the phone were “well aware that WOW had shut down.” While many budget airlines ask customers to pay using a bank transfer, Fidler says he opted with both Primera and WOW to pay a few extra dollars to use his credit card. “I’m so glad I did that,” he says, and he’s also grateful that this trip is a vacation rather than an essential business or family-related trip.

He’s already checked costs for a similar flight with Icelandair, which flies out of Dulles, and says that right now, the price is about $400 more. So he and his friend need to weigh whether they’ll pay extra for the flights, opt for a cheaper, less direct flight, or eat the cost of the deposits and scuttle the trip altogether.

“I thought we had this whole trip nailed down,” says Fidler. “But I guess not anymore.”

This story has been updated with comment from BWI and more information about WOW.