Originally Posted by
view
Not sure who in their right mind would prefer to connect in ORD for LAX or SFO, rather than make a quick hop to CPH and get on a longhaul to their destination. If going somewhere else on the west coast with no SK flight that changes the proposition. But a 4 hour domestic hop in the back of the bus is not fun after a transatlantic longhaul, US domestic flying sucks for a majority of SK customers today. Add in no global entry for most and the change of terminals at ORD and re-checking bags, you have quite a bit of uncertainty if you will make your connection.
Originally Posted by
Repooc17
You assume everyone with connections at CPH have lots of options. A small town in Denmark, for example, does not offer a lot of choices for "better" airlines.
Normal people don't fly CPH-ORD-SFO/LAX when CPH to SFO/LAX nonstop options exist. Your theory of ORD being all connecting pax is 100% false.
Originally Posted by
CPH-Flyer
And connecting in ORD does not have the alternative of connecting in Munich, Frankfurt, Amsterdam? It is not just connecting in Copenhagen that opens the door to considering other connection points. It happens as soon as you don't have a non stop flight.
There are cities in the US without TATL flights, so passengers going there would anyway need to connect in the US, but absence of a TATL is probably rather indicative of the passenger flow.
When reading these comments, I almost get the impression that some posters assume that, apart from Los Angeles and San Francisco, everything west of Chicago is just one huge unpopulated desert. Flights to destinations in states such as Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado would entail serious backtracking from SFO or LAX. ORD is also a perfect hub for flights to destinations towards the south, such as Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, etc. ORD is also a plausible transfer point for flights from Scandinavia to Florida. I'm pretty sure that you could even find a handful of people that live in the Los Angeles and San Francisco metro area that would rather fly out of a small local airport, such as ONT or OAK to ORD, instead of catching a flight from LAX or SFO.
By the way, the SAS decision to replace ARN-ORD with CPH-ATL is more or less a confirmation that it's mostly about connections. There is no other logical explanation why they have introduced ATL. I can't see why SAS would expect lots of Scandinavian customers to suddenly decide to fly to Atlanta instead of Chicago just because SAS will be a member of SkyTeam.