UltraRant

3 hubs doesn't have to be a problem, as long as the average traveler actually has a chance to make any of those connections without overnights at the airport, several extra hand luggage checks or general inconvenience due to poor choices of the airline. LH makes it work in Germany (oh, wait, BER still isn't operational), several North American carriers make it work (with even more bases), Australian, Brazilian and Japanese carriers make it work, so why shouldn't SAS be able to?

@nacho: Thankfully there's 1,25 NOK in a DKK now, which basically makes the deal ex-OSL slightly better. Not that I'm ordering, I've bought a private 3000 PVG ticket during the sale yesterday already.

nacho

@fassy, have you considered MMX? I have seen cheaper fare compared to ex-CPH - I saw the nowornever offer yesterday, ex-MMX to PVG is cheaper than ex-CPH. Although the itinerary is like MMX-ARN-CPH-PVG - so if you need legs to re-qualify - you can definitely go for a routing like this.

UltraRant

I think that still leaves him with the one issue he's not so fond of: connecting domestic-international in ARN. Otherwise it'd be a brilliant way to requalify.

oliver2002

Hmmm....

- LH only has MUC & FRA and about 80 million potential customers living near the hub to fill it. BER is/was never to be a LH 'hub' the one flight to IAD failed in the 90s, and DUS just got closed down.
- US3 have many hubs because they merged into each other and cover a frigging huge country with 300 million inhabitants, same would go for Australia and Brazil


My point is you can't have 3 hubs 240-320-340 miles apart with about 24-25 million people. Yes Finnland, Belgium and Austria, who comparatively of equal size have a major hub each, but not for one airline.

CPH-Flyer

For Japanese carriers, they have Haneda and Narita as a dual airport operation but that is to serve a 33 million people metropolitan area. Still no hub in Osaka or Nagoya. So to be honest, JAL and ANA are the arguments why SK should focus on one hub.

fassy

Yes, I thought about it but Sturup is a pain to go to. Way faster to go to CPH direct. Also the MMX-ARN-CPH-XXX is not always available. Guess based on timings

I'm ok with CPH-ARN-LAX in general, just not with leaving home between 4 and 5 to catch a flight at ARN at 9:40 via CPH. LAX departure at noon would be no problem.

UltraRant

That's interesting, for what I know LH had big plans with the new BER. But that's probably changed quite a bit in the last 5 years...

There would also be a few arguments in favor. We're talking about covering an area of about 1 million square kilometer for those 25 million inhabitants, quite some of it difficult to reach by other means than air transport. We have a merry bunch of air travel happy people (I do believe Scandinavians still fly the most of all European people). All three main airports generate more than enough traffic to justify hub status. And, as usual: despite not having 80 million people in the direct vicinity, a lot of traffic also comes from transit passengers (especially when the price, time or service is right) from other destinations. Finnair actually understood this and see what happened.

For Europe: Bjørn manages to cope with more than three bases (although he horribly fails at long haul for different reasons), including CPH, ARN and OSL. The American ones have closed down a few hubs after the big mergers, but even before some of them had a lot of hubs. NRT and HND are indeed the main hubs. Fine with me to call ITM and KIX something else than hubs, their official status is 'secondary hub' for what I know, at least for NH. Which contains that magical three letter word.

At the end of the day, it just boils down to proper management, vision, and the will to make (tough) decisions, something SK seems to have been lacking for a while now. Perhaps they should have a closer look at Air Canada: 4 hubs, 35 million people and a load of square kilometers to cover. And somehow it works...

ps. If you had chosen Belgium, Switzerland and Austria you *could* actually have said that it was 3 countries with 3 hubs that are somehow for the same airline...

pps. I'm not saying I *must* have 3 hubs. I'm merely stating I don't believe it's doomed to begin with. Geopolitics and unions make it a very interesting case, though.

ppps. OSL can't be considered a hub for long haul for SK, which means there's only 2 hubs left. The distance ARN-CPH is almost twice that of FRA-MUC...

HkCaGu

LAX-ARN RT is US$698. T class earns on UAMP 50% RDM and 100% PQM.

CPH-Flyer

ANA does a few short Asian flights from Osaka, no international from Nagoya, JL a few short Asian routes, plus Bangkok and LA from Osaka, nothing from Nagoya. They have a fair amount of codeshare and lots of domestic flights though. But the point was on the long haul flights, which are basically concentrated in Tokyo, and the rest of the country has to fly via Tokyo, or take foreign carriers directly. Eg. Thai and Cathay fly in to 6 cities in Japan giving plenty of options to bypass Tokyo.

Later addition: The problem for SK with the 2 or 3 hubs for long haul is the size of the fleet, and thus doing it efficiently. Vienna, Brussels and Zurich as three hubs on (sort of) the same airline has at least two fleets that are bigger than the SK fleet, and I am not sure about the SN fleet. However the BER expansion from Berlin was purely on European flights, Lufthansa was pretty clear on not establishing long haul flights. Now the picture is changed for them, with Eurowings being established, so we may see more German cities with long haul flights from the LH group.

SK2751

And these hubs are organized to cater for much more customers than just the narrow region around. I simple do not see SK becoming a large airline based on Scandinavian traffic only, and (so far) the long hauls from ARN and OSL are useless for non-scandinavian traffic, due to extremely weak feeding (and primarily not by SK flights).

FlyingMoose

They should re-evalute the merger/acquisition with/of Finnair, it would exponentially increase fleet, reach and destinations and create a much more powerful player.

nacho

I doubt about the 3 hubs strategy since it's certainly not economically efficient. I can understand that from the political point of view.

nacho

AY merge with SK

I doubt that AY would like to merge with SU.

oliver2002

And try to appease 4 hubs?

SU=Aeroflot. I think AY management would rather demolish their saunas, give up alcohol and start speaking Swedish before they will even dare to think about doing anything with Russians. In public.

UltraRant

Just so that AY can end up like KF, I guess... SK just chickened out of HEL after acquiring KF, leaving the place to AY (and DY nowadays).