jbb

I am a London-based *Gold member and have an upcoming business trip involving stops in Helsinki first, then Stockholm. The schedule involves going LONDON-HELSINKI-STOCKHOLM-LONDON. Of course, as a *Gold member I would like to give my custom to SAS or another * airline, but they sure aren't making it easy!

For my dates, I can do this schedule quite easily on Finnair/BA for GBP243. In fact, I was very impressed with Finnair's booking tool and pricing for my dates. It was simple, straight forward and easy to use.

In comparison, SAS has been incredibly frustrating. SAS does not allow any multi-city bookings on its website. I asked "Eva" on the website about multi-city bookings and she said that multi-city bookings had to be done through the 'sales and support' line. I called the sales and support line and they said that this was just 'technical support for the website' and recommended I just book three separate one ways. Considering the first one way flight was more than the entire multi-city flight on Finnair, I discounted this option quickly and asked for the phone number to the reservations line. They gave me a phone number which ended up being the number only for travel agents, so they gave me another number for regular reservations. I called this number finally and the automated message said that any bookings over the phone would incur a GBP30 booking fee. Since I was kept on hold for several minutes I just gave up.

Are there any ways to booking a reasonable multi-city flight on SAS? Or should I just go with the Finnair option and forego the usual *Gold perks? I find it very surprising that a major carrier such as SAS does not allow multi-city bookings online, especially when one of its main competitors does it so easily! Surely, they're missing a trick for business travellers who want to hit multiple Nordic cities on the same trip?

jefi99

The easy answer is to use a travel agent, either online or a "real" one. They should be able to help you.

jbb

I've tried with Kayak, Expedia and Travelocity. Travelocity and Kayak do pull up an SAS option, but they only have 'premium economy' (according to the flight details) and the price is more than double Finnair at GBP543.

chokeman

That's crazy. Maybe you should try http://www.viviro.com/ they have some very customizable options and I usually find the best fares there.

JamesBond_ppk

Try wideroe.no It's a SAS Group company. Their booking tool is much more powerful, and propose all the companies.

SirRagnar

Yes, it looks like it might be possible here: https://www.wideroe.no/booking/12/in...ver=production

jbb

Thank you everyone for all your suggestions.

I tried wideroe, and the SAS flight was still in the GBP500 range (NOK5,100). I did manage to find an SAS/Blue1 flight for GBP470 on opodo, but that seems to be the cheapest I could find. Oh well, I guess I'll get to try Finnair service for the first time! Too bad, as I am a big fan of SAS from my frequent use of their shared (with AC) London Lounge and a great flight I took a while back from ARL-LED.

M747

Try booking segment by segment, eg lhr-hel new booking hel-arn etc or part thereof. Sas is great on one way fares, in comparison To other carriers

jacob_m

How long are you staying in each city?

I have not looked at any fare conditions, but I doubt any LHR-HEL fares on SAS would allow stopovers.
If so that means you can only stay less than 24 hours in Stockholm (that would be regarded as a transfer) if you want all flights part of one ticket, otherwise the ticket would have to be priced differently.

pswe

I have the same experience and I think that's why SAS doesn't have a multisegment tool on the webpage.
I just for fun tried to match the price you got from BA, without knowing when you travel I searched for flights on December 8th and came up with a grand total for the three flights at more or less the same level as you indicated. (for the LHR-HEL flight used the blue1.se page, as the prices there were much lower than at the SAS page)

(In addition to keeping you business with *alliance you can also try to benefit from the Optiontown upgrade on the Blue1 flight)

Cheers // P

jbb

My dates are as follows:

London-Helsinki, November 29

Helsinki-Stockholm, November 30

Stockholm-London, December 2 or 3

I tried the option of using one ways, but one-way flights from LON-HEL on Blue1/SAS on November 29 are about GBP240 so already with the first segment I'm almost exceeding the cost of the full trip on Finnair. LON-HEL flights drop considerably to about GBP100 on November 30... but unfortunately my meetings are booked so no flexibility there.

jth

Yes, this is probably a big reason. SAS intra-europe pricing is really based on the one-way trip koncept. The price of a r/t will always be 2x one-way trips in the cheapest possible booking classes for those specific flights.
So to get a cheap r/t, or multi-city for that matter, one have to find the cheapest possible flights for each segment. While this is not easily done on the SK booking page, i use ITA for it and then book at some other site or at a travelagent.
I don't really think that SK web page is supposed to be used by business travellers, it's really designed towards the low-cost leisure traveller.

It might be more cost efficient to let a TA find the cheapest fares for you, rather than trying to fight the SK booking pages on your own time.

another_shot

I thought so as well, and in most cases it is true (I'm using hell a lot of one ways with SK). However I was recently looking for OW to CDG and it was considerably more expensive than 50% of RT (same flights).

p.s. just took a look again. VNO-CPH-CDG OW + CDG-CPH-VNO OW is aprox 100 EUR more expensive (eco extra) than the same flights taken as roundtrip ticket.

Hannibal Lecter

you can also use this site to book SK multicity
http://www.goleif.co.uk/

ranskis

return price can differ from the price of 2 one ways. If you take published fares (that exclude taxes), i think from CPH for some booking classes, the OW is 55-60% of RT. For some booking classes or some markets (origin of the ticket), OW is indeed half or RT... but OW in the other direction is price differently, in the currency of the country of departure.

Example: CDG CPH CDG will be priced as 1/2 RT CDG CPH + 1/2 RT CDG CPH, fares in EUR. If you split the ticket, you get 1 OW CDG CPH (in EUR) and 1 OW CPH CDG (in EUR). The you have open jaws, like CDG CPH // ARN CDG, and you pay 1/2 RT CDG CPH in EUR + 1/2 RT CDG ARN in EUR.