pseudoswede

Exactly. It's been a while since I've seen a Dane or Norwegian on the American silver screens.

FlyingMoose

I figured frequent travelers on here could do better. Clever use of dry cleaning services at your hotel and 3 weeks with just a carry-on his hardly a challenge.

Does that make IAD, PVG, PEK, NRT and SFO flights primarily for the CPH crowd and secondarily for the Nordics?

I'm convinced we'll see a healthy amount of traffic transferring from domestic and Scandinavian connections. Plenty of time to rest on the 11hour journey.

In terms of alternatives, connecting onto the 10AM LH flight from FRA or 9:45AM BA flight is more challenging than connecting onto the SK flight from ARN at the same time. As much as I appreciate LX, the 12+ hour long haul journey along with the 2,5 hour feeder flight isn't a viable alternative. While your trip starts at the same time, you could be 40% of your way to LAX by the time you board LX40. I'm also not a fan of arriving at my destination at 4-6AM home time which you get on 5PM EU departures.

FT Guest xyzpdq

Well everything is in the eyes of the beholder. I realise that you hate CPH and everything about ARN is great. I was refering to the early departure times out of ARN - which does not allow for connections outside the nordics. There is no SK IC departure out of CPH earlier than past noon. Most other IC departures out of CPH is past noon - to allow for easy connections. My point was that is not the case for the ARN IC - in part of course because there are not as many feeder flights into ARN. Even most other (non-SK) IC departures out of CPH does not leave until past noon.

I have earlier argued that I do not understand that SK insist on having 2-3 IC hubs with only a dozen or so birds. Pick one and then excell there. Make a sound business decision on which one it should be - based on facts and not political games. Personally I would prefer CPH, just like you would prefer ARN.

CPH-Flyer

Depends... I find it annoying to drag that size carry on around airports. A lot of my trips will include a connection. Range of the aircraft is still insufficient, or the direct flights do not exist. Also, after a short while I just got fed up with the restrictions of travelling carry on only for long trips.

Not really, they depart later in the day, allowing for a way wider selection of connections, Nordic and European.

FlyingMoose

That's not entirely true. My issues with CPH are more related to the Danes than with the airport, to many negative experiences. I've praised various things about it as well, specifically the MASH restaurant. Which is something ARN could learn from. I do not agree on the one-hub strategy, it simply doesn't work for SK which has been obvious. The multi-hub strategy might also not work, though it will be an improvement over the previous situation and longhaul from ARN+OSL is something a considerable amount of customers have requested. I've turned around from boycotting CPH transfers (onto SK metal) now ARN and OSL have gotten their share of new longhaul routes. Happy to transfer onto SK925 and SK935 if the CPH crowd gets the same treatment for SK933 and SK963.

ARN certainly has numerous flaws though as a local I'm not affected by the majority of them (the biggest being terminal changes) and a number of those flaws do have been addressed in the past 24 months. I find that the main issues I've encountered in CPH have been problems for years and aren't being worked on. The things that do have been improved in CPH recently unfortunately do not affect me.

RedChili

For political reasons, they chose CPH as their single hub. That worked well until they got competition, and then SAS almost went bankrupt. The political decision to place the hub in CPH is the reason why SAS has lost so much of its home traffic. E.g. Finnair could never have "stolen" so much Swedish-Asian traffic if SAS would've had an Asian hub in Stockholm. If SAS had been run properly from the beginning, they could've had a bigger Asian hub at ARN than what AY has in HEL today.

UltraRant

Ok, just got a mail from SAS putting the LAX flights on offer for 4699NOK for a return (roughly 525 Euro at the moment).

Earnings on EB seem to be in line with PVG, HKG, SFO and NRT: 4500 in Go, one way, ex bonus.

GUWonder

An SAS hub at ARN is more out of the way for most trips by most Scandinavians and continental Europeans than a CPH hub is -- even if ARN could have replicated the AY Asian positioning.

UltraRant

Not entirely true. If you now head for Asia on CPH you basically fly over ARN to get to your destination. It shouldn't matter if you use a bit more time on your feeder than on your long haul, unless you're in business of course.

AY actually used this fact in a smart way by using shortest distance on a globe samples to show they are the 'shortest' way to Asia... Someone at their advertisement department had a very bright moment.

Anyway, I support the hypothesis that if SAS actually had put in an effort to stay in the game over the last few decades, they probably could have had a lot of the traffic to Asia that AY serves nowadays.

UltraRant

Because it arrives at 2:10 at night... Nevertheless, would still require luggage pick up and checking in with SAS, as ST and SK don't have interline agreements, for what I know.

RedChili

For flights to Africa and South America, I totally agree with you. For flights to Asia, when Soviet airspace was closed and most flights were routed over the Middle East, I also agree with you. Also when trans-Atlantic flights typically stopped at Shannon to refuel. So, CPH made a lot of sense at the time that political decision was made many years ago, when SAS still had lots of flights to all continents.

But the fact is that today, all SAS long-haul flights either go north-west from CPH over Norway and the North Atlantic, or north-east over Sweden and Russia. So, with today's network, going through CPH is a detour for most Scandinavians.

Stockholm is a bigger city and bigger financial center than Helsinki, with a bigger potential for long-haul flights. The problem is that when Russia opened up and China became a financial powerhouse, AY was ready while SK was not.

Why stick to this ancient political CPH hub decision when the world has changed and the geography of flights have changed?

fassy

I rather take a flight GOT-CPH-LAX and connect in-terminal than GOT-ARN-LAX due to the retarded T4-T5 transfer

If they fix that, I would agree to do all est bound connections through ARN, all west-bound from CPH, none from OSL

Anyway, leaving at it is, the early departure sucks for flying in to ARN. Noon would have been fair and opened up the market to them. Agreeing 9 to 10 is a great time is a very egocentric view of Stockholm dwellers

I can imagine they will adjust that schedule sooner than later. But perhaps it was done based on available slots in LAX which might be hard to come by.

nacho

DKK 3999 for ex-CPH to LAX.

oliver2002

And we are back to the CPH/ARN/OSL hub discussion sadly as long as this dysfunctional SAS multi country thing exists, its going to be around. The Finns are happy they just have one big airport

fassy

Na, I would be happy with whatever hub strategy they would follow. Be it just one, two or all three capitals. The only thing they need to make sure is to schedule departures in away which makes it convinient for connecting traffic - that's the basic idea of a hub, right? Get people there to move them on. If you schedule departures in a way that the first part is either inconvenient or just impossible defeats the idea of a hub? Doesn't it?

From my home I have either 1,5 hours by car or 2,5 hours by public transport to CPH or a 50 minute flight to ARN (plus 10 minutes to go to the airstrip). Still I will continue to go for CPH since the departures out of ARN would not work for me. Especially in winter where you might see some delays connecting in to the one day flight out if ARN will be madness. And I do not fancy the idea to spent the day then at an ARN hotel.