Bloomberg article on SAS - can’t be good
Aug 8, 2019, 2:12 am
#91
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So SAS fortunes now rest on the VFR traffic to CEE? I thought they made their profits with carting around scandic business travellers?
Aug 8, 2019, 4:50 am
#92
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We just flew Got-CPH-NCE in Plus. I found SAS to be OK. I was surprised to see how empty the planes were, maybe 25% of the seats were occupied.
The GOT lounge is OK, the CPH one has good looks but it was a 15 minute walk form the B gates. Onboard, small sandwich and a beer on the first short flight, nicer salad box followed by chocolates on the longer flight. Luckily on both flights empty middle seats. I would do it again but wonder how they can survive with such empty flights.
The GOT lounge is OK, the CPH one has good looks but it was a 15 minute walk form the B gates. Onboard, small sandwich and a beer on the first short flight, nicer salad box followed by chocolates on the longer flight. Luckily on both flights empty middle seats. I would do it again but wonder how they can survive with such empty flights.
I had it once to AGP around the same time of the year. Near empty plane to AGP and huge crowd waiting at the Gate in AGP to get into the plane.
Aug 8, 2019, 5:05 am
#93
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SAS repeating the same thing and expecting different results is not by itself a strategy for long-term survival and independence of the airline.
SAS seems to cater more to “Scandinavian mainstream” back of the flying bus passengers than to anything else. Where has that taken SAS? To its current state.
Last edited by NewbieRunner; Aug 8, 2019 at 3:03 pm Reason: Moved part of the post to the Forum Kafé thread
Aug 8, 2019, 3:17 pm
#94
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Aug 9, 2019, 9:39 am
#95
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SAS seems to be skipping the boat to Poland for the most part too, at a time when I encounter way more Polish-speakers in southern and eastern Sweden than Serbo-Croat-/Bosnian-speakers. That said, I’m expecting that the FYR-connected population in Sweden is still at least double that of the Sweden-residing, Polish-connected population in Sweden.
CPH has VFR flight demand from ethnic Polish people in Sweden and also from Polish Danes — a growing number of whom also seem to live in southern Sweden. But I am not holding my breath waiting for SAS to do anything majorly different than it has been doing for that VFR traffic too. But I can’t complain since my routes tend to be the mainstream routes for SAS.
I just need an SAS route to MSP and DEN, then I’ll be in heaven.
CPH has VFR flight demand from ethnic Polish people in Sweden and also from Polish Danes — a growing number of whom also seem to live in southern Sweden. But I am not holding my breath waiting for SAS to do anything majorly different than it has been doing for that VFR traffic too. But I can’t complain since my routes tend to be the mainstream routes for SAS.
I just need an SAS route to MSP and DEN, then I’ll be in heaven.
If SK was half as brainy as it thinks it is there'd be flights from NRK to Sarajevo & EBL but nope.
Aug 9, 2019, 11:45 am
#96
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G
Aug 9, 2019, 12:10 pm
#97
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Ethnic traffic doesn’t equate to high yields (LOT would be making record profits and fly A380s to London & Chicago if that was the case...). Moreover, SAS only recently tried with Sarajevo (from Copenhagen), it didn’t work (it was a useless twice-per-week service in direct competition with Norwegian, which had/has flights to Sarajevo from other cities in Scandinavia).
G
I can't imagine Poles in the US travel back to Poland as often as you imagine or that Polish-Americans have a considerable desire to see the "old country", given that many are also Jewish and Poland was and is awful. They'd also have to compete with US airlines that pad the summer season with flights, adding lots of capacity.
Are OS's costs that much lower than SK's? I know LH treats them as a way to shunt lower margin or thinner routes to a cheaper provider. They do have that benefit of being able to segment the market in ways that SK cannot.
Aug 9, 2019, 5:29 pm
#98
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MSP can just connect at ORD or IAD, like they've always done, and MSP is a DL hub so you'll just have to make do with whatever Junker aircraft they are running these days. DEN is "hot and high" so it lacks lots and lots of long distance international flights. It only got a nonstop to Asia in the last few years.
If SK was half as brainy as it thinks it is there'd be flights from NRK to Sarajevo & EBL but nope.
If SK was half as brainy as it thinks it is there'd be flights from NRK to Sarajevo & EBL but nope.
Denver does not do too badly.but it is driven by being a United hub, meaning mainly United and Star Alliance partners. But BA does also come to Denver. So a bit like MSP and DL, most other carriers connect there.
Aug 10, 2019, 6:09 am
#99
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US carriers don’t make much of flying to Poland. AA is starting a summer seasonal US-Krakow flight and that seems to be at least as much about (non-VFR) tourism as VFR traffic (if not even more about that than non-VFR tourism). The large communities of those Polish-Americans who speak and/or understand Polish completely are not very frequent travelers to Poland — as there is a reality about US workforce and business practices that mean most such persons don’t have a lot of time to go Poland repeatedly, even if they increasingly have the means. But LOT seems to have tapped into that maket very well and the dynamics there too are changing for it — as is evident with/via the upward mobility and demand for say Chicago-Poland traffic. SAS never seemed too eager to get that business and make it work, but Lufthansa — and also Air Berlin before it went under — did try hard to get that business and make it work.
When looking at the work of building contractors in Chicago, the two most common non-English languages to be heard at home building sites: Spanish and Polish. Polish seems to be one of the two most common foreign language for home builders I encounter around Malmo and around Chicago. But that’s not going to make for much demand for ORD-CPH, not that SAS seems to have any desire to do anything beside what it has been doing.
SAS seems to not even be all that much into using Star Alliance partner hubs in the way DL uses some SkyTeam partner hubs and AA uses some Oneworld partner hubs. And, no, this isn’t an argument to support SAS getting anti-trust immunities to hook up closer with UA/LH.
When looking at the work of building contractors in Chicago, the two most common non-English languages to be heard at home building sites: Spanish and Polish. Polish seems to be one of the two most common foreign language for home builders I encounter around Malmo and around Chicago. But that’s not going to make for much demand for ORD-CPH, not that SAS seems to have any desire to do anything beside what it has been doing.
SAS seems to not even be all that much into using Star Alliance partner hubs in the way DL uses some SkyTeam partner hubs and AA uses some Oneworld partner hubs. And, no, this isn’t an argument to support SAS getting anti-trust immunities to hook up closer with UA/LH.
Aug 10, 2019, 11:58 am
#100
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Aug 29, 2019, 12:30 pm
#101
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SAS has long possessed anti-trust immunity with United, but the two sides don't leverage it much beyond codeshares and favorable pricing in a few markets beyond their respective hubs. True, UA's primary TATL focus is the A++ joint venture with AC and the LHG carriers. Still, you'd think SAS would work to get a UA codeshare going on nonstop flights between the US and Copenhagen, as UA hasn't served CPH in many years but it's still a sizable destination.
Aug 30, 2019, 3:38 am
#102
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SAS has long possessed anti-trust immunity with United, but the two sides don't leverage it much beyond codeshares and favorable pricing in a few markets beyond their respective hubs. True, UA's primary TATL focus is the A++ joint venture with AC and the LHG carriers. Still, you'd think SAS would work to get a UA codeshare going on nonstop flights between the US and Copenhagen, as UA hasn't served CPH in many years but it's still a sizable destination.
My post was about not wanting SAS to get more ATIs.
Aug 30, 2019, 4:53 am
#103
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TAP, LOT and SAS are not part of any ATI/JV unlike other *A carriers and hence offers very low fares in business class to compete with NH/LH to Japan, UA/LH/AC across the atlantic, SQ/LH to S.E.Asia/Oz and LH/CA to China.
https://www.lufthansagroup.com/en/co...-ventures.html
While that may be very good for the consumer (I'm definitely not complaining), it certainly is not good for their earnings.
SAS and LH had an approved cartel between the Scandic (or even the nordic?) and Germany for ages, which lapsed in 2005. During this era other projects used to be deemed feasible too (bmi, spanair, blue1, etc) Only the *A project survived.
https://www.lufthansagroup.com/en/co...-ventures.html
While that may be very good for the consumer (I'm definitely not complaining), it certainly is not good for their earnings.
SAS and LH had an approved cartel between the Scandic (or even the nordic?) and Germany for ages, which lapsed in 2005. During this era other projects used to be deemed feasible too (bmi, spanair, blue1, etc)
Only the *A project survived.
Sep 4, 2019, 12:22 am
#104
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UA's boarding process - which seems to change every 6 months to something even more confusing than the one it replaced - is a mess. I much prefer the SK priority boarding system.
Sep 7, 2019, 1:52 pm
#105
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In Europe I probably appreciate KL's most as they make clear announcements and instructions and they are happy to send non-priority boarders back if they try to cheat the system. In the US, easily DL's is best since their first group is First and Diamond only and boards before people with kids and the small armies of golds and alliance elites. The point of priority boarding is to remove the zoo factor from boarding an airplane and to allocate overhead bin space by group which is defined by spend or elite status.