CPH-Flyer

AA works pretty well, CK members first, then first class, followed by group 2 which is business class and emerald. Not sure how it goes after that. But it does mean that the first few groups are quite small and the boarding for these flow relatively well. I am not sure who is in group 1 on international flights without first class.

highupinthesky

Too bad you refuse to fly through CPH, because there SK reject non-priority boarders until it's their turn. The system has been rolled out to other airports too, but I can't recall whether ARN has been included yet. There were some issues with the ARN managed IT platform which had to be upgraded first.

FlyingMoose

In ARN it lacks operator instructions and to many gates don't have the self-boarding gates yet. Its a zoo every time. Not because the operators don't know how, since they do so successful for AF/BA/KL but because SK isn't managing them. I've seen it work slightly better in CPH but also still no operator instructions and telling people in advance not to try to board as they'll be delaying the departure. In part its of course because of the passengers and the lack of visual instructions is probably not helping either. I've seen US airlines dumb it down as far as they can with big screens showing the boarding sequence so it works for most audiences. Unfortunately it seems the average SK flyer needs similar instructions.

fassy

IME it works in general pretty well in CPH. They use the monitors over the gates show which boarding groups are called, the GA announced which groups to board and the gates reject people which try to board before their group is called. During the last 6 months or so I have seen it enforced pretty well.

The only issue - and that applies to all European airports - is that the great unwashed mass crowds the gates and as priority boarding begins they rush the BP scanners, even though it has been clearly communicated it is not their turn. Then they stare unbelieving on the red light when their BP gets rejected and are locked in place by the rest of the mass pressing forward. As priority boarding guest, the best option is trying to sneak in from the side via the agent controlled gate scanner.

The only option to really improve this is by clearly assign queues for each boarding group. Never have seen any issues with the boarding groups on UA flights in the US. Works pretty well, at least what I have seen.

highupinthesky

On the old airport platform in ARN it's wasn't technical possible to use boarding groups on the manual boarding card scanners. That has changed with the new airport platform, and SK did enforce it the last couple of times I flew out of ARN (+4 months ago)

When SK started with the priority boarding in CPH, the first month there were a lot of none priority pax's rushing for the gates as usual, just to be rejected. But since SK have a lot of repeat pax's it's a lot better now.
Currently CPH are installing additional monitors over the automated gates. On these monitors the boarding procedure is explained and IMHO in a better way than in US. ARN has started to install similar monitors, but are behind CPH as usual.

When boarding started last time I flew long-haul out of CPH, it was announced that only business and Gold members were allowed to board at the beginning. The staff checked the boarding cards and enforced the priority boarding.

Last but not least. It takes time to change habits, but all in all. IMHO SK are enforcing priority boarding more and more. CPH is the front runner where the new procedures are tested before they are rolled out to other airports. Airports without SK staff will of course be the last to get the new procedures.

oliver2002

By chance I looked at my SAS shares (which I bought in July when I saw this thread) and they are up 19%. What changed the markets mind??

GUWonder

The traditional bell-weather stock index for big Swedish-listed companies has gone up 25% YTD. Even from the summer’s low to the more recent high, the index has gone up rather substantially still.

Norwegian’s troubles and changed focus in the past several months has probably also comforted an SAS which is on the cusp of a fleet renewal that will improve its financial comfort level regardless of the discomfort it may cause to customers in the main. Also, there is increased interest in acquisition activity in the sector and that may mean SAS gets eaten sooner than would have otherwise been the case.

”Flying shame” was never a real business problem for SAS. And SAS even has very senior management —its COO for example — which wants to see increased taxes on flights departing from Scandinavian airports. Higher taxes on air travel could possibly be a structural way to put LCCs under relatively more pressure than is applicable to say a legacy major like SAS.

highupinthesky

SAS release the prediction for the year end result today, and it's up from 0 or below to 500mill DKK or above. The new prediction is driven by improvement on all key parameters. Atleast that's how I read the analyses I've seen so far.

GUWonder

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-s...-idUSKBN1XI182

When the Swedish housing market is “too” frothy/expensive for most of the remaining wannabe buyers of their own place (sort of), there tends to be some leftover money to be spent on travel and other entertainment. When the bulk of the Scandinavian labor market is tight, the employed may have way more money to speed on travel and entertainment, more so when housing affordability isn’t increasing big time anytime soon and so there is even more of the mentality of “live/spend for today because the welfare state’s safety net has us anyway and that dream home is nowhere near now.”

budenholzer

Congrats!
I bought i July as well and mine are up 28% trending at 17 today (hi-points have been in the 23 range previously).

highupinthesky

If this was true, we should see improvements, similar to the ones SAS has seen in the last quarter, on the majority of airlines serving the Scandinavians hubs, but this is not the case as far as I understand. Apparently SAS has performed better than it's competitor in the last quarter, and this is the reason for the newly released improved forecast.

GUWonder

It can remain true even if airlines serving the same hubs have somewhat diverging results.

There are only two substantial airlines that have ARN, CPH and OSL as shared hubs and thus are best compared if trying to rely upon your kind of argument: SAS and Norwegian. Norwegian reported better performance in recent months than many expected, enough so that it's bought itself a longer life-span than some had expected it to have when this thread was created.

highupinthesky

Norwegian did perform better than expected in the last quarter, but they had fewer pax's compared to the year before. This drop is not only down to them reducing their flight program. SK had improvement on all key parameters, including number of pax's. Beside that there are other airlines serving the Scandinavian hubs. LH group have quite a number of daily flights in and out of those airports, and as far as I know they haven't seen the same improvement on those routes as SK has.

GUWonder

LH group airlines don't have any Scandinavian hubs, even as they have Scandinavian spokes; and of the Scandinavian spoke airports where they have more than 10 flights a day, they don't account for even 10% of flight movements IIRC. And I would be shocked if Scandinavian flights account for even 15% of LH group's total passenger miles flown. In other words, trying to use LH as a benchmark for SK's changed fortunes to be region-independent is not really a well-founded comparison of even fruit to fruit.

highupinthesky

At CPH, the LH group airlines together occupies more than 4 gates full time. That's more than norwegian occupies.