Originally Posted by
Svantevit
Nope - it's a new flight so there will be three daily departures to the NYC area.
Or as SAS cleverly puts it in
their press release:
The new route enables SAS customers to travel easily from both the West and East side of New York as SAS continues to offer departures from Scandinavia to Newark.
At the end of the day, this is was Anko has said the A321neo allows SAS to do: test the water with new routes that might not begin profitably with a widebody. They seem optimistic enough to schedule an upgauge to A330 later, presumably as the fleet returns closer to full capacity next summer. Starting a new route that can feed Scandinavians (evening departure from CPH = lots of connections on this side of the Pond) to a perennial leisure city break destination like NYC seems a safer bet than launching ARN-YYZ with almost no collaboration with AC, that's for sure.
On another more general aviation forum someone said this wouldn't scare Delta, but I think that misses the point. Despite everything we moan about, SAS has strong airline loyalty in Scandinavia, so if you're not going further than NYC a flight on SAS with EuroBonus points, lounge(s), upgrade possibilitys, and good connections from the whole SK network is going to be more appealing than Delta.