We have a Viking cruise coming up in June 2024 (Iconic Iceland, Greenland and Canada - Reykjavik to New York) and I'm trying to understand what are the benefits of using Viking Air besides the airport transfer. We currently have air included in our reservation ($1400 pp for economy). Knowing that we want to spend a few a days in Reykjavik pre-cruise we would have to add air deviation to our booking (another $100-150 pp) and if we wanted to pick out certain flights or a specific airline we'd have to use Viking Air+ (another $100-150 pp). After all of that we are now looking at $1600-1700 pp. Additionally, looking at MVJ we won't know our flights until March 10, 2024 which seems really late if you trying to compare to other flights.
When looking at flights with similar dates for June 2023 I've found flights for two people for under $1600 round trip, which is half the price as Viking Air. I'm not married to any one particular airline and with coming in a few days early I'm not worried about missing the cruise.
Can someone please explain to me what I'm missing.