Originally Posted by
jamesbrownontheroad
Outside the Nordic countries, Germany remains Denmark and Sweden's #1 trading partner.
Almost more than any other country, SK needs a watertight strategy for continuing to serve Germany from day one of life in SkyTeam. Since the majority of SK service to Germany is codeshared with LH, Lufthansa has an immense advantage on these vital city pairs.
I am not sure that a tight Germany strategy really matters as much for SAS as the headline trade numbers would lead people to believe at first glance — and going into a more sector by sector analysis of the trade flows could perhaps show why it doesn’t. And short-haul business class is sort of like a necessary evil, all while the important back of the flying bus is a lot about network effect benefits when it’s not short-haul, point-to-point traffic driven.
Neither AF-KL nor Denmark are going to want to rush and kill off SAS routes that work on a point-to-point basis. Maybe they will even try to make Copenhagen Air — aka SAS — the center of getting people between Scandinavia and Germany. A SkyTeam option to get directly between Scandinavia and Germany will provide LH some competition, and we need more of that as even with Finnair in Oneworld, Oneworld doesn’t fly great for the bulk of the Scandinavian travelers who go to Germany.