Originally Posted by
FlyingMoose
No it is not - if people systematically avoid SAS for their flying business simply because it can not meet their IC travel they will loose money in more verticals than just a single IC route. There has been an outcry for over a decade for more IC from ARN. Especially for frequent travelers who can not rely exclusively on SK to begin with, even for European travel. Now DY has proven that there is plenty of room for additional IC (and EK + QR for that matter) and thereby killing SK's argument that there wouldn't be, it's time to act. Same goes for OSL, QR even has 2 flights a day from there.
ARN-SFO and ARN-HKG would make a lot of sense. The CPH crowd can transfer in ARN instead of the other way around (and not add 3+ hours of travel) for an Asian destination. It would open up the necessary extra capacity to SFO with better connection times.
In some ways it would make sense to connect in Arlanda for the Asian destinations, just as it does for Finair to focus on moving people to Asia. (The same logic would then keep SFO in CPH if it is a dual hub structure)
Nobody disputed the size of Stockholm market for intercontinental travel, all that is being disputed is the financial viability of having more than one IC hub with the small fleet that SK has.
As for people not being able to rely esclusively on SK, I live in Tokyo and I can't rely exclusively on JAL. I can't even rely on JAL and ANA combined.