Passmethesickbag

It's been a few months. Had no idea it had become this bad.

The fridges at the "flagship" Scandinavian lounge are now empty, bar a few bottles of cheap white wine and a few bottles of water. Fancy a beer? Bog standard Carlsberg is still available on tap, to let you experience the Business Class lounge experience from downstairs for free. But you need to go to the other corner of the catering area to get a glass. The largest available glasses are 1/3 pint size.

So other lounges offer champagne. SK, back in the day, used to offer some quirky and good wines (no long gone). What remained, last time I looked, was a selection premium Scandinavian bottled beers because, you know, this is a Scandinavian airline, and, you know, Scandinavians take pride in the beer they make, and, you know, it's also really cheap stuff.

I'm really beginning to wonder if this airline is beginning to struggle to pay their bills. Their empty planes and their empty fridges this month have really started to bring back memories of the last weeks of Pan Am and Varig.

nacho

The draft Carlsberg at CPH there has been bad since the first time we tried it - it's certainly disappointing but again I'm not surprised.

SAS is a half way LCC anyway (food and drink for purchase in Y except tea and coffee, and 1 soft drink on long haul and no snack in Y), so as long as you don't have any expectations then the airline is OK.

CPH-Flyer

Or they can afford to pay bills because they incur a lot less bills in general, including these things?

Though the empty planes part could be more worrying. I just did a PEK-CPH-PEK, and in both cases business was rather empty. CPH-PEK as Saturday departure was fairly well booked in Plus and Go. I was wondering if the route is really doing well.

klmml

Agreed, the CPH lounge is a bit poor - when added to the wifi that won't let you connect to VPNs (discussed elsewhere) and the fairly long slog from A or B piers, it's not really worth it all the time. In terms of food and drink, though, it's not really any worse than any other SAS-operated lounge.

If I really want to use a lounge and I'm not actually departing from C or D right outside the lounge (my connections in CPH are very often B-B or B-A and less than an hour), I just use Priority Pass to go into the Aspire lounge. It's a fairly decent Aspire lounge in CPH, compared to some of them.

Passmethesickbag

Is that good enough though? Yes, people are used to getting box wine on tap at GOT, but this is meant to be their premium lounge at their main hub.

Passmethesickbag

But I'm talking about beer, not vintage champagne. There's still smoked salmon...

klmml

No, it's absolutely not good enough - and it's shameful when compared to what AY or BA do at their hubs, but it's no worse than KL (say). What is unique about SAS is that their premium short haul product is not competitive with these airlines on any front: lounges are mediocre, on board food is embarrassing (particularly on Nordic flights), no seat block, weak customer service, elderly planes. And they're not exactly charging LCC fares.

Seen in that context, it's just another thing about SAS that just isn't good enough.

Tango Alpha

The lounge has been called Gold Lounge for a couple of years.

Agree, not impressive beer-selection. You need to wait till you are airborne. Then there is Mikkeler beer.

CPH-Flyer

The sum of things that has been cut, not just the beer.

It was sometimes said as a joke that SAS was an abbreviation for "Salmon, Always Salmon". Maybe once the smoked salmon goes away we should be really worried.

FlyingMoose

Mikkeler isn't great either. I understand its a big deal in Copenhagen but its not living up to its reputation.

A couple of reasonably drinkable beers which are accessible to most visitors in the lounge really isn't impossible.

Tango Alpha

I know, you don’t like Mikkeller, Flying Moose. Though it is a strange statement, as they have some 40 at a time in their bars.

But none the less it is a premium product, and by far not just a Copenhagen-phenomenon. It's global.

And it is very unusual, that you can have it in a plane. Though the SAS-versions is quite/too much mainstream.

But still, the lounge....

transportprof

Last week, I spent several hours in the CPH Gold lounge for the first time in a decade. I wasn't looking for beer at 11 a.m., and enjoyed the salmon and potato salad. The place seemed a bit less deluxe than my earlier visit, but it was still quite pleasant and refreshing (especially the shower after a TATL flight).

As a point of semi-random comparison, I'm typing this from the Austrian business lounge in Vienna, and the morning offerings here consist of bread, butter, jam, scrambled eggs, and cornflakes and muesli. No fish or cold cuts. No Viennoiseries, ironically. But there are two types of bottled beer in the fridge!

I prefer the SAS Gold Lounge in CPH, even with the limited beer supply.

fassy

You enjoyed the POTATO SALAD?! That's the first time I hear that from anybody. So far all I talked to (and me included - I talk to myself a lot ) think it is the worst potato salad I have ever tried...

Yes, the Vienna OS lounge is not a great place. Usually very full, tiny and the food options are limited. But compared to e.g. The LH lounges in FRA and MUC (or even HAM) and the LX lounge in ZRH the SK lounge in CPH has to catch up a lot...

Actually the SK lounge was quite okay until recently... All the cost cuts and then our complaints started about a year ago.

FlyingMoose

In your excitement you missed that he also said he liked the Salmon which is equally surprising.

fassy

Depends... the salmon today was disgusting (cold smoked glibbery slices) but sometimes if the have the whole hot smoked salmon I actually like it... Haven't seen that in a long time but also did not go through CPH that much in the last quarter. My iPhone wallet now stacks yellow boarding passes more than blue ones...

Also I like the Dill-Salmon-Pasta salad very much. But so far only saw it in GOT.

I think the highest bar for inedible still holds OSL when they catered some shredded chicken... shredded without removing the bones first... I would say, in some countries people would actually sue the airline for serving life threatening stuff like that.