FlyingMoose

When I navigate to sas.se or sas.se/en/ I'm being prompted with a pop-up to select my location. When I select Sweden, the only language I'm allowed to choose from is Swedish.

Is SAS making it official that they no longer want international travelers on their flights or is this their Corona strategy?

Interested to hear if others have the same issue, I'd like to make a newspaper or two aware of this discrimination.

Apparently I'm only allowed to have English as a language in Europe when I live in Poland or Switserland.

highupinthesky

I don't think so. It's been like this on sas.dk for a couple of years. The location only impact the default origin and currency when you book your flights, so I normally just pick UK as location when I need to see something in English or uses flysas.com

FlyingMoose

Previously you could just navigate to sas.se/en and you'd get the local site in English. Something that still works for sas.dk/en/ (no prompt).

supersympa

yes, that is true FlyingMoose, you cannot do it anymore.

you can choose only one language per website now it seems.

France = french, Norway = norwegian etc etc etc....

highupinthesky

Not for me. I get the prompt on both sites, so it's probably a cookie which has expired for you since you are now getting the prompt on sas.se and not sas.dk. My browser clears all cookies when I close it.

On a side note. You of course planned to complained to SK before you will notify the newspaper

FlyingMoose

Its been a decade old bug that sas.se would not remember your language selection but at least I could at every visit switch to English or navigate to sas.se/en/ manually.

It is no different from SAS's phone line with the `press 5 for English` just to be talked to Swedish anyway. Seeing how SAS has ignored all of my previous communication I see no value in trying again.

nussle

I complained to them already that I am registered as a English speaker on Eurobonus yet they keep sending me promotional material in Swedish. Their reply was to learn Swedish...

If I cannot book via the Swedish web site in English as I have always been able to do then I guess I will have to set my site as America or British and deal with the silly currency problem.

I just wish SAS did not hate us so much...

highupinthesky

If you hate SK this much. Why are you using them at all?

It's unfortunately deep in the Swedish culture to avoid English if possible, and the support of the SK website together with the customer service is unfortunately located in Stockholm, which is VERY Swedish

fassy

Huh? Living as expat in SE for years, Sweden is one the easiest places to get around with without being proficient in Swedish (of course apart of native english speaking countries).

The only thing you need to learn is how to press the right sequence to survive the phone answering queuing

highupinthesky

I don't see that contradicting what I'm writing. Most Swedish people do speak and understand English, but that's not the same as they are willing to use it if they can avoid it. I'm from the western part of Denmark and my Swedish is almost none existing. I constantly face Swedish people who are reluctant to use English when i communicate with them. They insist we should use the Scandinavian languages, at least until I switch to my local dialect.

ps. I think you delete the [ before the /Quote. It messes up the quote.

nussle

I'll write it again....I wish they did not hate US so much.

Why do I use them....I would prefer LOT or LH but they don't operate ARN as a hub.

I don't think the customer service is located in Stockholm....when I call them they speak very good English often USA accented but perhaps they are, I never asked.

SK operates across the globe and generally speaking the universal language is International English so if they have decided to not communicate in English its not going to be good. The Corona virus page is in English and only in English so its too early to predict that SK is self isolating into its own national languages.

highupinthesky

Both LOT and LH have hubs which is less than 2 hours from ARN, and there is at least a flight every third hour from ARN to all of them. When I check, the total travel time for a long haul flight is only 3-4 hour longer going through a LH hub instead of flying direct from CPH. That not much in my book for a long haul flight and definitely worth it to avoid airlines I don't like.

If your flights are mainly intra EU, there are plenty of alternative to pick from although many of them are discount airlines, but to me it sound like you view SK in that group.

fassy

Well, western-Danish dialect is mean to even Copenhagen Danes, right...? Very much like Scanian to most Swedes or Swiss German to a northern German like me. I guess it makes a difference if Swedes talk to Danish or Norwegians compared to non-Nordic people. I guess they just assume you all understand each other to some extend. Well... I as German do not understand Dutch! Even so, I'm from around Northwest Germany

For me, as soon as the Swedes in front of me figure out I'm not Swedish, they switch to English in an instant. And are mostly happy "Great, I can train my English with you!". Which inhibits me, to learn proper Swedish, since everybody around just wants to talk English with me...

fixed

GUWonder

Plenty of free translation tools around if struggling to make heads from tails when on a site in an unfamiliar language.

The only Scandinavians who frequently encounter me in a personal capacity and seem to insist speaking Danish to me no matter what are the Danish grandparents of one of my godchildren ...... and I think it’s because they assume I have been living in Denmark for a long time since they see me at a lot of family events in Copenhagen and even hours away within Denmark. They know I’m not Scandinavian but I think they don’t get that I more easily understand more spoken Swedish and Norwegian than Danish. For most all other type of encounters, it’s pretty much by default that most Swedes hear my English-accented version of words and try to switch to English or ask if they should do English or Swedish. Danes in Denmark seem more intent to default to stick to Danish with me than Swedes are to stick to Swedish when talking to me.

While most Swedish people — or at least those who began their schooling in Sweden — are able to understand and speak English to a very decent extent, it can be mentally taxing to many of them and there are plenty who are insecure in communicating in English (perhaps because they had bad grades in it in school). The notion that Stockholm Swedes are doing some kind of “Swedish” thing with the website language selections strike me as not focusing on what this is more likely to be about than some kind of discomfort with English.

highupinthesky

Not just assume. Insist. I've been in multiple meetings where one or two insisted we use Scandinavian languages since we are all from Scandinavian.

Strangely enough. When I talk to people from Skåne, they have less issues with switching to English than people in Stockholm.