It has nothing to do with wanting to kill an airline. The problem is that for the majority of Stockholm based frequent long haul flyers SK is not a viable option. They fly to EWR and ORD - which are terrible airports and I simply do not fly US domestic unless there are zero direct flights with any airline directly from Europe. Unless they are your final destination - which in my case they seem to never be - you don't opt for SK. Then there is the complete lack of Asia routes.

If you need to transfer anyway and there is no notable difference in time lost when you opt between AMS, CPH or LHR the decision making process will quickly change to service, product and price. In which all three cases SK comes out on the bottom. Ignoring other items where SK is vastly inferior such as meals, IFE, old aircraft etc. I would be considerably more likely to opt for SK connections in CPH (or OSL) if the airline could serve my travel needs better. At this point they seem to simply not care about the Stockholm based customers and I have zero incentive to be loyal, especially since an almost 70 year old airline still hasn't figured out how a FF program, priority boarding and priority luggage should work.

Apparently there are a lot of travelers with a similar opinion if you look at the number of locals transferring to IC with other airlines daily. There is a reason BA has 9 flights a day to Stockholm and that number seems to ever increase for example. I'm well aware of the difficulties SK is facing and to some point agree they need to simply decide on a course, but I'm very confident that at this point there is more revenue in new IC from ARN than there is from any other hub. New planes, new locations and the new cabins is exactly what SK needs at this point to retain and attract more passengers. Their game should really be time saving - which is something they have been trying to do with the punctuality PR and very short transfers.