US carriers don’t make much of flying to Poland. AA is starting a summer seasonal US-Krakow flight and that seems to be at least as much about (non-VFR) tourism as VFR traffic (if not even more about that than non-VFR tourism). The large communities of those Polish-Americans who speak and/or understand Polish completely are not very frequent travelers to Poland — as there is a reality about US workforce and business practices that mean most such persons don’t have a lot of time to go Poland repeatedly, even if they increasingly have the means. But LOT seems to have tapped into that maket very well and the dynamics there too are changing for it — as is evident with/via the upward mobility and demand for say Chicago-Poland traffic. SAS never seemed too eager to get that business and make it work, but Lufthansa — and also Air Berlin before it went under — did try hard to get that business and make it work.

When looking at the work of building contractors in Chicago, the two most common non-English languages to be heard at home building sites: Spanish and Polish. Polish seems to be one of the two most common foreign language for home builders I encounter around Malmo and around Chicago. But that’s not going to make for much demand for ORD-CPH, not that SAS seems to have any desire to do anything beside what it has been doing.

SAS seems to not even be all that much into using Star Alliance partner hubs in the way DL uses some SkyTeam partner hubs and AA uses some Oneworld partner hubs. And, no, this isn’t an argument to support SAS getting anti-trust immunities to hook up closer with UA/LH.