Originally Posted by
the810
But SAS clearly doesn't want to provide lounge access, since they don't contract lounges outside *A hubs. It's the other way around - lounge access is only possible because SAS Plus is booked as business class (even though they market it as premium economy) and thus automatically comes with lounge benefits under *A rules. I'm pretty confident that SAS would have no issue contracting lounges for premium economy if they wished so.
Plus originally had lounge access at basically all airports they flew to in Europe. My guess of their thought process with the cut of the contract lounges and is that they felt that major business hubs would be covered and mainly more leisure oriented destinations would be where the lounges were lost. There are some examples where business destinations lost lounges, and leisure did not, but you can't make an omelette with breaking a few eggs.
I think Plus is actually collateral damage in all of this, the target was EBG and above on dirt cheap tickets in Go.