Has anyone had experience with special meals and accepted upgrade bids. The terms and conditions say both that SK won't guarantee special meal availability if accepted and that anyone with a special meal request must have the bid submitted at least 25 hours in advance (presumably to allow for special meal processing).

It will post as ticketed, not upgraded.. and SAS being a non preferred partner, it will max out at 500 pqp

Plus->Biz
ORD-ARN
17Nov min bid 300 USD, my bid - $325 (weak). 4 seats available in Biz day of departure. Not successful.
CPH-ORD
21Nov min bid 300 USD, my bid - $325 (weak). 9+ seats available in Biz, Successful. Biz was 1/3 empty anyway, after upgrades.

Plus to Biz
ORD-CPH
23 Nov min bid 270EUR, my bid 270EUR (weak). from seat map there seems to be 12 seats available still. EF shows at least 9 seats for sale. Bid accepted. (yay!)

10 months ago, I snagged an Economy Go fare for mid-December IAD-CPH-IAD for under $350 pp round trip. The upgrade options have been the same forever:

Economy > Plus minimum bid is displayed as 475.99999999999994 USD (yes, it is displayed with that many digits!)
Economy > Business minimum bid is $1,176 USD

At those prices, I'm passing. I'm not sure if the bid amount is so high because I started with an insanely cheap fare or if it is becuase the equipment is an A-321 with far fewer upgradeable seats than an A-330. Those bid price minimums have been the same for many many months. Same amount on both outbound and return itineraries.

Plus -> Biz
24/11, SFO-CPH, showing minimum bid 7200 SEK. Must not have got many takers since I managed to get it at the gate for $540 and the biz cabin is half empty

FYI - I recognise airline catering around the world is going through it right now, but if you are upgrading into SAS Business, you may want to consider self catering. Out of Copenhagen the food was really grim (the main at least, the salad/appetizer was pretty good). Chicken that was both tough AND dry and completely inedible and dried out fish. Second meal was open sandwich with shrimp and dried out eggs on some dried out bread - no other option. Everything else was fine, good hard product, drinks offerings (lots of them, including post meal!), the snack set up. No menus handed out either so it was - chicken, fish, veal, or vegetables on couscous.

We upgrade mostly for the hard product with the soft being an added bonus, but the food was really bad and multiple steps down from what we had in 2019.

Plus Smart ---> Biz
Nov 19, ORD-ARN: bid $365 USD, successful for 2. All seats went out full.
Nov 27, CPH-ORD: bid $335 USS, unsuccessful for 2 but wasn't expecting it to be. Expert Flyer showed only 4 available seats 10 days out, and we were perfectly fine with Plus on the return. Both Plus and Biz cabins were full.

This was our first time flying SAS and would fly with them again. Hard product was acceptable (not the best, definitely not the worst). Only complaint was wifi outbound was not functioning, and on the return the speeds were so slow it was practically worthless.

We are headed home on Friday ORD-ARN and current bid is 4500 SEK and it hasnt dropped yet. Expertflyer is showing both cabins as full, so not sure what the deal is there, although Ill guess that if we put in a bid tomorrow it will be rejected regardless. Given this storm at the moment, I imagine the flight times will be rather speedy if we have to stick with our current seats in Plus!

I was curious to try out the SAS Plus experience on short-haul, so I bid 101 EUR (min. 100) on the segment from LIN to ARN and won.

Although my expectations were low, the upgrade was still one of the bigger wastes of money in my life:

• No lounge at LIN because SK doesn't pay for the contract lounge
• Exchanged an exit-row seat with extra legroom for a regular rubbish Y seat in row 2
• No free internet onboard because the wifi on the aircraft was broken
• Cold chicken breast salad on a flight almost three hours long
• Sparkling wine (the same Cava they serve at the Gold lounge at ARN) was shockingly bad, in fact the second worst wine I've had in the air (the first one being the Do & Co prosecco served by OS)

In short, I don't see how they sell this product to absolutely anyone with a straight face (although the cabin seemed to be mostly made up of Swedish government employees, which explains it to a certain extent).

The value comes from the longhaul product upgrade mostly. There is almost no differentiation in product between Econ and Plus in short haul, and SAS is even worse than most Euro carriers in this regard. At least on BA they block the middle seat and the food is actually somewhat ok-ish. SAS used to have those cool cube lunches with some pretty fresh food, though I see those got tossed at some point. ARN-CPH in Plus was something from the paid-menu cart and the chance to get on the plane first.

Outcome of ORD-ARN - bid minimum was changed to 7200 so we 'toughed it out' in Plus. I think business went out full, Plus was at 95% or so and Econ was maybe 50%. Lots of poor mans business class happening back there! Food was actually better in Plus than Business.

SAS has some product issues they need to iron out, but overall we were content with the product and service we received, for the price we paid, for the travel permutations we needed to do.

I think the cubes and the boxes contain roughly the same stuff. I did not see a major change on the menu, besides packaging. This packaging is easier to eat from and a longer fork fits in, so in general an improvement. But overall I agree with the SH assessment. I only get SK plus occasionally when I estimate that I have to improve my earnings and avoid any mileage runs (which I hate).

I was cleaning yesterday and found the sticky note with the original pricing of our route when I was researching flights - 1365GBP each for Business out/Plus back. We paid 600GBP each for Plus/Plus, and then what, about 300 each to upgrade into Business that one way, for a yeah, pretty sizeable savings. I can live with a bad meal to save almost 1000 pounds!

When regular economy class inventory is sold out, Y/SASPlus still may be available and sold.

Of the better paid Swedish government employees whom I know, most have only traveled in economy class (at least while working for the government). IIRC, nothing at work stops them from paying up their own money to upgrade work trips or using points earned from work trips for upgrading work trips. The more frequent government flyers should already know there is no point in bidding out of their own pocket for upgrades to SASPlus intra-Europe.

For late this month, ORD-CPH had last bids going from economy class (Go Bonus) to business class in at $462. They didn’t drop it on the way despite even flying out with a couple of business class award space inventory seats remaining (and going unused).

For *Gs who think there is some economy class seat-blocking benefit that happens at times on SK departures from the US, there is also sometimes an alternative to pay for an extra seat to be blocked. SAS was charging a bit under $80 to do in economy class that today from a few US airports.