How much time to next crisis?
 

I'm real glad that SK was able to survive this crisis, especially since I'm scheduled to fly SK back to OSL in a couple of days from the US.

But, I wonder how much time this buys. Any guesses as to when SK could possibly come in the same situation? Or to put it another way, how long in advance can one buy a SK ticket without the possibility of another bankruptcy scare.

I'd say my guess is as good as yours... but personally I wouldn't worry about it other than that I'm definately paying all my SK booking with a credit card, so I'll get my money back if things don't work out.

Other than that... they might go bankrupt if you book long in advance, but then again, any other airline might just aswell strike/have a techinal problem/change schedules/cancel flights that messes your plans up.

I am hoping this doesn't turn into self fulfilling propethy. People are worried about bankruptcy -> nobody books -> bankruptcy.

I do pay with credit card, but that is of little help if SK goes under during your journey. If SK went under now , I'd have to scramble to get an overpiced ticket back to OSL from the US during the busy Thanksgiving season. I also have over 50,000 EB points that I may want to burn before the next crisis. What I wanted to know is how much of a time frame have the banks given SK before they will need another credit extension subject to their approval.

I think March 2015 was the deadline for the loans mentioned some other place on this forum. So 2.5 years. Of course, like with anyother airline, or business, this does not mean that they will not run out of cash before this deadline ...

Depending on what Scandinavian news paper you get your daily news feed from it varies from 6 months to a year and a half. Both Sweden and Norway are ready to sell when the time is ready whereas Denmark is a reluctant to comment at all on the subject.

I'd be interested to know how much of the pension problem was solved last week. How much is left of the 12 billion? If it's significantly reduced then SAS may be on the track to recovery to be a healthy company. If not, it's just a matter of time until they're bankrupt.

I wouldn't mind too much about booking flights with SAS, but I am considering keeping my points balance at a minimum level.

As far as I understand only future accrual (i.e. no further accrual due to conversion to DC plan) will be affected by the deal with the unions. Of course if some staff under DB plans will have the retirement age delayed (cabin staff) that could reduce the liabilities slightly but I do not think it will have much effect. SAS has 12 billion of pension assets recognised that will have to be derecognised come November 2013.

All they have secured is to roll the debt forward, at a higher cost since the creditors want better yields for the increased risk. However, they did manage to get a decent chunk of cost cutting in place.

The inherent problems are still in place though so the end game is the same. The vultures have backed off for the moment.

Don't keep too much EB points: Eurobonus program as such is on sale.
http://flyawaysimulation.com/news/46...ndinavian-sas/

I'd like to se the source of this, because in terms of official announcements in Scandinavian media SAS managers have repeatedly denied that Eurobonus is up for sale (while they have almost been running a public auction for the other two entities mentioned).

Sounds like something lost in translation somewhere...

In another message SK was using the wording "EB will remain the integral part of SAS", however as was exactly discussed on another tread here, this doesn't really mean they will not sell it - you can have it as integral part of the product and same time owned by somebody else.

But when they write SAS they probably mean SAS, not the service. But as we all know, strategys tend to change quickly in this company.

Speculation is one thing, but this article states as a fact that Eurobonus is up for sale in the same breath as Wideroe and the Ground Services. The latter two has been publicly announced for sale but the former has been denied several times.

I just thought it would be nice to add some details and a reality check to this article, which basically is an aggregation of the last 3 weeks of events that has been covered in detail on a day-to-day basis (some days even hour-by-hour) by all Scandinavian media.

I do not know exact source of this statement. This article was brought out by one of my automated news alerts. So far it seems kind of only one message talking about Eurobonus on sale as a fact, after all speculations while talks with trade unions continued, at least in English speaking media. So all we can do is wait and see.