Hi there,

I'm about to describe a multi-stop travel route -

Мы ездили в Исландию. We went to Iceland (& back?) // We've been to Iceland.
Мы съездили в Исландию. We went to Iceland (& back?; source: gramota.ru) -
Мы полетели в Исландию. We flew to Iceland & that's it.

I for one would stick to the last one, since the second flight will be elsewhere and not back to the airport the narrator originated from.
As for the second one, I'm not sure. I feel that the emphasis is similar to the third one, where you talk about an action that took place, but nonetheless returned to the origin.
The first one is about having been there. My feeling is that the reason people use ездить about travels is either because of a repeated action that they once used to do back in the days and/or some general statement that is a proxy for "to be" -
Using ехал is out of question for me. I'm not intending to describe the process of getting there. Nor am I implyig that I'm still in Iceland.

I've poured over the countless motion posts on this forum. They appear to be related to the present (tense), whereby one often can distinguish between ездить and ехать. In this case, however, I'm talking about some action in the past.

My question is:
What would natives say in this case (one way trip...the second trip is to another place)?
How about a return flight?
Does ездить mean a roundtrip now or not? (some contradictory postings over here in the past...)

I love the fact that Russian, compared to other languages, is among the "logical" ones, but still has some cases where you have to go with the flow and stick to the convention. So, yeah, I'm aware that I'm talking about an "old hat" here.

I'm looking forward to your help.

Thx.