ucla95

Cancelled TATL flight for Tuesday, auto generated email - “a rebooking process starts immediately” and a link to EC261 rights, but have to contact SAS for compensation I gather. Not sure if we’ll see new flights or not, but hope so! Was cancelled at 8:30am Sweden time.

For those who got new flights, how long after the ‘a rebooking process has started’ email did they come?

andrew3000

About 3.5-4 hours for the "we haven't been able to rebook you, sorry" SMS, for a westbound Transatlantic with CPH stopover. Both legs were cancelled this morning between 8 & 9am CPH time.

There were 2 cancellation SMS around 8:30-ish (1 for each flight), then 2 more saying "we give up". The 2nd of these contained the booking ref and confirmation that the itinerary has been cancelled and they won't rebook. Good luck!

vanillabean

I also got such an email, hours after I had already visited the CPH Service Point desk and gotten rebooked.

jerry_greece

I have to say that my refund (for a flight bough via flysas.com) came in in 1-2 days after the cancellation hit hutton.

ucla95

Chase Ult Rewards told me they can only refund or change the dates and stay on SAS, If I want to be rebooked on another airline have to call SAS. All circuits are busy on the SAS line now and the chatbot is saying 'no humans available'

kiteloop

I have a VIE-CPH-SFO flight on July 14. If my flight gets cancelled, would they be able to rebook me on any start alliance flight that I can see on Google Flights?

ucla95

Got an email out of the blue (about 9.5 hours from the orig 'rebooking process started' email) that I have been rebooked eastbound TATL. Super long layover in LHR but who cares.Orig ticket was booked on Chase Travel portal.

American_Dane

How likely are you to be rebooked in your originally booked travel class? Booked direct flights in Plus and I'm just going to say no if I get offered a Y TATL. I also have a refundable back up trip in Premium Economy for that eventuality.

Euroboy

My wife and I were 'stranded' in CPH trying to get back to SFO on July 9. Booked on SK935 in 'J' class. SAS cancelled on the 8th in the AM. I called the number in Sweden and got through in 10 minutes or less. Agent was super nice, but could not find any way to get us back to SFO until July 14th (which was a no-go). I gave her multiple options that I had found online (CPH-LHR-SFO, CPH-IST-SFO, CPH-DOH-SFO, etc.) but she could not find any of them (or could not book them, who knows...). Honestly I don't think she tried very hard. After 15 minute she gave up and said we were on our own. 6 hours later I got a mail from SAS saying they were unable to rebook us. A 10 minute call to United and I had us booked CPH-LHR (SK) on July 9 with an overnight and LHR-SFO (UA) on July 10th. It was super expensive (one-way, last minute C-class ticket), but we needed to get back to SFO.
I submitted all the expenses to SAS for reimbursement. Now the waiting game begins.
I was a bit floored as the July 9 CPH-LHR flight went out with several open seats and the July 10 LHR-SFO flight on UA had 4 seats for sale in the C-cabin until a few hours before departure...
So it is almost like SK is asking for trouble (or just want customers to do the work themselves).
If they give me a hard time on reimbursement I will just have our credit card issuer dispute the entire original SK ticket as they did not provide the service sold. I can't hardly wait to deal with all of this - not! :-)

wp_kid

Is it better to wait for their systems to book you on alternate flights? Or pre-empt and feed them with options that you can find online?

poshul

Please let us know how that process goes. I was really tempted to rebook my FRA->ARN->ORD J tickets with Lufthansa, but the price differential was about 4000$, and I had a nasty feeling that I wasn't gonna get that from SK short of an extended legal battle.

GUWonder

They should be able to do so, but they aren’t always necessarily able and willing to do so. It’s sort of like roulette with SAS. I tend to get what I want with rebookings more easily at CPH and OSL than on the phone with SAS. But I also have instances where SAS rebooked me at the airports and then days or weeks later the ticketed PNR just goes stale unexpectedly.

ksu

The question is how binding a decision of a US court would be for a Swedish company, negotiating according to the employment laws of three different countries.

atsak

IANAL, but you'd be surprised how binding decisions in courts in various countries are on other countries. Generally if you do any business at ALL in a country, court decisions are binding (frequently for example Canadian companies seize assets of US ones who think court decisions aren't binding on them and vice versa). If you get a judgement and a company doesn't comply you're just asking for someone to get a seizure writ (that's what they are here in Canada) and enforcing it on property located in CAnada, for example, but the US is fairly similar. You can for example seize a plane, and sell it, to get back your money, though a judge would probably want you to be a bit more reasonable. . .

ksu

You seem to miss the point of the Scandinavian three-party system of labour negotiations, with the government as the third party. With a strict agreement that the heavy industries, prone to international competition, negotiate first means that they set the level of increase of renumeration for the entire labour market, making it very difficult for other industries (and the public sector) to give higher raises. This keeps the labour market in check. In Norway, this is called Frontfagsmodellen. And if someone actually gets a higher raise than Frontfagene, it's not the employers that protest, it's the other unions! And if the government stops a strike by imposing compulsory arbitration, the pay board will usually end up by imposing the raise from Frontfagene or the last offer from the employers.

One of the reasons that the recent flight mechanic strike in Norway met with very little sympathy (unlike the pilot's strike) was that the mechanics demanded a raise of 18%, far above what the heavy industry got (4,7 % AFAIR). So the general Scandinavian point of view is that this model is not causing any damage in itself, it stabilizes the economy. The disruption comes, when someone, like the current SAS CEO, is trying to impose totally different ideas, which destabilize the equilibrium. It is not very successful.

As Svalbard has got an exemption for the rest of the week, there is a good chance that it will be extended for the rest of the strike. The remoteness and lack of alternatives will not change. It's not just a question of visitors being stuck, it's the question of getting in essential supplies and securing emergency medical care.

In any case, negotiations are probably restarting now, with SAS signalling that they might be willing to actually negotiate.