FlyingMoose

Even the basic panini's on OS's short intra-EU flights are amazing and 100x better than anything that SK orders. I've had the veal before as well and it is amazing.

I can not understand why SK is struggling with the same basic problems such as food and IT for decades. These are not hard problems to solve.

AStarr

After some recent running around in Denmark, I've realised that the paleo and protein salad bowls at 7-11 are probably similar quality as some of the SAS Cubes I've had...

So... guess I'm going to try out Lufthansa or Swiss for my regular trips to England? Ha... Oh my... I'm already taking layovers most of the time getting from Aarhus to Sheffield with significant train times. Changing the route to a different airline with better food wouldn't really alter my schedule as I end up devoting all day to the trek

ScandiGB

It has been a while since I have taken stock of developments over the past year. This is based on travelling Plus in Europe, Business long haul, and gold lounge access. Comments are appreciated:

Lounges:
- Quality has improved. The cold spread has widened and there is regularly warm food in the afternoons. The quality of both warm and cold food is subject to some variance.
- Breakfast is consistently decent quality although only cold options are available.
- It is a better than a year ago but quite far from what is served by eg BA or LH in their Lounges.

Short Haul:
- Box has been introduced. I find this a (small) improvement over the previous offering. The serving size is quite small though, and some of the options continue to be very peculiar.
- the muffin is a disaster. The bread they had before was excellent. Now it is a doughy brick with strange flavour combinations. Please can someone get a grip?
- Breakfast is consistently very good. Here they excel at showing what good airplane bread tastes like.
- SAS has some of the best airplane coffee.
- drink offering has become increasingly peculiar with Swedish whiskey, Norwegian gin, Mikkeler vodka and beers. I think it is an excellent initiative and I like the products (but it is key that they still have a normal pilsner, as I can appreciate that the other option may come across as an acquired taste).
- a side note for Go and the trolley: I think the amount of food that can purchased can be vastly expanded. Carriers who make money from the trolley such as EZ or DY have a vastly more interesting selection of food items for sale. Even BA has more interesting food in their Maris&Spencer offering.

Long Haul
- I think the main meal has improved. I really like the Löjrom starter. The salad is usually excellent and the initial cold dishes are typically good to very good.
- the warm dishes are typically ok. Sometimes a bit less than ok. Sometimes good. I have neither tried terrible, nor great. The presentation is almost always awful. The taste is usually ok, but the meats can be quite chewy. This is an area where other airlines do better.
- the cheese is typically good (but not great)
- the desserts I find very good although often on the small side.
- the snack bar is good.
- on the drink side I like the focus on a Scandinavian products, but I think I it is a shame that the wine offering has seen some cuts (e.g. Sauternes, red wines, and champagne clearly products at a lower price point than 18 months ago)
- for the second offering, I often skip this, but find Breakfast to be generally high quality while afternoon snacks are a bit bland.

Key areas I would like to see improved therefore include: lounge offering, short haul mufffin to be killed, short haul food to be further improved, and long haul main course to be further improved.

ScandiGB

coolburning

These days, I have tried to enjoy food in the lounge before getting on board intra-European flights since the boxes do not meet my expectation at all. Last time, I flew between ARN-FRA-OSL and both flights serving the same kinds.

Honestly, what I love these days is 'Kakor' . . . so nice butter cookies. ^^''

studentCPH

While the food has improved somewhat, sometimes, the drinks have gotten worse. Ginger ale enhanced away, along with tuborg classic/guld tuborg in CPH. Only servering the carlsberg is pretty dull.

JeeiJapan

I fly SAS C NRT-CPH 5-6 times a year and I always choose the vegetarian option. Its always a lot tastier, and often more appealing than the other options.
The meat is often dry chewy and overcooked...
I agree though, it takes forever to get though the service tho.
They need to speed that up or use some lower light settings from dessert onwards?

FlyingMoose

Going from awful to terrible isn't worth calling out imho.

I don't think anyone should be forced into selecting a certain meal because the other food isn't great while other airlines are doing a good job cooking the same food.

This, this and this. Please keep calling this out, SK does not understand that night flights are for sleeping and that a 3 hour dinner service on a 8 hour flight followed by breakfast leaves no time for sleep. Complete lack of respect from cabin crew to passengers wanting to sleep as well, lets keep those glasses and that silverware rocking like there is no tomorrow with the lights at maximum brightness.

SAS keeps boasting about its numerous years in the airline business but it still can't get the basics right.

JeeiJapan

I really think they could skip the nuts and 1st drink and go straight to the starter course with a drinks cart at the same time. Then as I wrote from Dessert; lights go to half brightness. Then they only need 1-2 rounds of coffee and tea instead of the like 10 rounds....anyone else wanting more coffee (not that many on a night flight surely) can go to the bar and get it. Or use the call button...

Does anyone from SAS read these comments and active on here?

SK2751

The lights are quite bad also on short hauls, very late or very early. On the WX CRJ900s they no longer switch off lights entirely for take off and landing. And there is a rather strong light fixture along the walls over the windows, straight into eyes of a person trying to sleep in the window seat. This stays on the entire flight. SK used to switch off lights entirely at least for take off and landing on their CRJs. WX does not. Also I recall many light night short hauls with Lufthansa where the lights would stay dimmed *throughout* the flight. This was so nice (also keeps people quiet), while on SK there is always full light, like on a factory floor. I hate it.

AStarr

They're wearing me down with the muffin bars. If you eat enough, one or two become edible. I actually finished one today. Sweet potato with jarlsberg

alltforsverige

I just had a well-traveled colleague take the EWR-ARN flight for the first time. He said he was tired after the "short" flight compared to ones from Asia, and I joked the the "3 hour dinner service" probably didn't help. He immediately agreed and said he couldn't understand what took so long and if something went wrong on his flight. No, I assured him that was the usual excellent service.

Oh the sound of that clanging glass and metal haunts me sometimes.....

I started to wonder if maybe I was just crazy but have taken Delta across the Atlantic a couple times again lately. It was amazing to have dinner served quickly and go to sleep! And stop wondering if I was completely crazy.

Jespersm

An unreasonably hard time in business; may I suggest a seat further down the bus where the plastic glasses hardly make any noice.

oliver2002

In May I had a 11pm ATL-CDG flight on DL and it took them ages... reminded me of the classic ORD-ARN 10.30pm flight in 2004-06 where dinner service was 3h irregardless of the fact that it was past midnight in Chicago and time for breakfast in Sthlm.

FlyingMoose

I did SK940 just a few days ago and we where in Canadian airspace by the time the dessert showed up. It's not worth 3,5 hours of air travel to wait for the smallest slice of pie you will ever be offered by someone with a straight face.

I'm confident we where East of Montreal before the lights went off. I have 11 months until I need to renew EBD for 2019, the rapid overal decline of SAS is not motivating them to have me continue spending money here.

At least on DL you can ask for the expedited dinner service. Something people have been asking for decades to see on SAS. Night flights are for sleeping so you arrive rested and energised for meetings after compensating for the terrible food on your way, it feels that passengers don't get to sleep because the FAs don't get to. Must be some complicated Swedish equality nonsense.

That ARN-ORD problem still applies.

alltforsverige

Similar. My travel slowed down quite a bit in the second half of this year thanks to generous Swedish parental leave, but it will pick up some early next year. I could probably make it back to EBD by September 1 if I wanted, but I am leaning toward pushing as much to DL as possible. My secondary base is Minneapolis, so it works OK. Then try to keep just enough to hold EBG for the Star Alliance Gold benefits on the other European carriers.



That last line made me laugh!

When it's inexplicable by any other means, "jantelagen" is probably a pretty good guess. Much-discussed elsewhere, but I'll never understand the gate and boarding/deplaning behavior in Scandinavia either.

And yes, the expedited dinner service is a great safety net. Of course I've had a DL flight with slow service too. It happens. I'm just surprised when it does because the majority of times it does not. The difference is there is never fast service on SK. At least not in any of the many TATL flights I've taken in the last 2 years. I've done roughly the same number on DL either AMS-EWR/MSP/DTW or MSP-AMS, and I remember 2 times that it dragged to a level even approaching SK.

I guess one time it might have been close to 2 hours for service. In 3 flights over a period of about 3 weeks, I decided I'd watch the Taken trilogy one movie at a time. It was perfect. The first two movies are about an hour and a half. The grand finale stretches to nearly two hours. Start at takeoff. Enjoy meal. Finish movie and dessert. Sleep. On SK, I could have probably watched all 3 with dinner. That is, if SK had enough movie selection for me to have such a chance