highupinthesky

When it comes to cancellation and rebooking, the cancellation of the China flights are similar to the strike about a year ago. Back then SK rebooked on different metal and different routes, but only on their partner airlines, and they had the same refund/rebooking policy for volunteer refund/rebooking as now. This time the rebooking is a little harder as other airlines have canceled their flights in/out of China too, but on the other hand, a lot of PAX have canceled their trips too so the number of rebookings should be smaller for the 2 routes.

nacho

The Swedish government has advisory until Feb 11 (called IF to ask about cancellation insurance and they told me that), no idea if they will extend it.

nick5000

I would be very surprised and upset if I was on a SK trip to china (or any country) and while there was told that the return was delayed by 1 month and they would not rebook me to get home earlier.
I would think the Scandinavian press would also be interested to write about someone that was left behind in china by SK, especially if it was a family with small children.

many other airlines say they will rebook on other carriers.

highupinthesky

We haven't heard from you in a while, so wonder what has happened in this case. Did your partner manage to get rebooked too?

Regarding the lack of infomation about the cancelation is probably down to how you booked the flight. If you booked directly at SK either through the SK website or by calling SK, I'm very surprised if you didn't get any info from SK. They normally spam me with updates when there is disruptions on one of my flights. If you booked through a TA or OTA, it's their responsibility to inform you. SK don't always have the contact info when booking through a TA or OTA. If booked through TA or OTA, the rebooking should actually be through them not directly through SK.

nacho

I thought SK took over the responsibility once OP was on board for his outbound journey.

herwig

Thank you for all these answers and the support from the community. My friend made it back to Europe yesterday after being re-booked by SAS following another call to their service hotline.
It just seems that the two agents he talked to at first, completely misunderstood the situation or were simply not competent enough dealing with the re-booking.
So in case anyone is in a similar situation, please insist with the agent that it is SAS duty to get you re-booked for your return flight - or simply hang up and call again to connect with another service agent.

(and sorry for not answering earlier - I got myself caught up in the flight disruptions due to the storm in western/central Europe with multiple delays and follow-up re-routing)