lmontesi

I have a flight in mid aug- i am nervous about it being cancelled!!

CPH-Flyer

The strike will in all likelihood be over before that. There might be some reverberations due to an icy relationship between management and pilots, meaning no overtime and work exactly to the conditions that may end up having a higher cancellation rate than normal, but huge swathes of cancellations will probably not be the case.

fassy

Got a mail from SAS:

CPH-Flyer

Got the same a little while ago. SK on the PR offensive....

jamesbrownontheroad

Really? Because millions of Norwegians, Swedes and Danes have been voting with their wallets for years by choosing to fly Norwegian, not to mention other airlines with similar outsourced staffing arrangements. I simply don’t believe that customers are that principled. The whole of Scandinavia is held together by an aviation sector that depends on cheap off-shored or out-sourced labour.

SKT-DK

It is not just aviation, really - I have not come across one single hotel employee recently who can speak a word Danish in Copenhagen. That is in Radisson Collection Royal and the likes… But I don’t see hotel employee going on a crusade…

livious

Similar for me, but it was curious to note that there were only reassurances but little in terms of apologies for the disruption.
Received a much longer and more apologetic from the AF CEO for the disruptions in Paris, despite not being affected. Strange that SAS barely mentioned this because for those affected, this is all that matters. Sure I want my Eurobonus memebership to stay relevant, but I will still be emptying my account and AMEX vouchers on Star Alliance partners. SAS seems to miss the point that the major problem for the customers is the strike.

GUWonder

Talk about SAS trying to also hoodwink the customers; that or SAS being so deeply buried into permanently knocking down its employees that it can’t even think straight about what has already happened to customers this month.

the810

Well, they can't claim the strike isn't going to happen, but they can claim that EB will survive. I imagine the idea right now is to avoid mass redemptions and people exiting the programme, which would be another nail in the coffin. Thus, they're trying to reassure at least some of them that there is no risk of EB going down soon.

GUWonder

When it came to other airlines that have used US Chapter 11 bankruptcy — whether to to avoid home country jurisdiction for insolvency concerns or not — within the last 20 years, the loyalty program customer account balances managed to survive more typically than not.

Avianca kept chugging along with Lifemiles from the start to finish of its Chapter 11 process.

bakrgby

Get ready for some good status match’s

gojko88

Certainly my first idea after reading the news.

EqualOpp

So where do Danish work?

GUWonder

The people working at those Danish hotels’ front desks are not generally outsourced — and their work is definitely not offshored.

Front desk hotel employees at the higher end Danish hotels mostly encounter customers who can speak English, so the need to staff the front with Danish-speakers isn’t as important as it used to be. But I still encounter hotel staff in Copenhagen who try to speak Danish to me or are Danes who speak English to me. Denmark has more of a labor crunch than Sweden, so the more experienced locals have been moving on up or out to higher paying grounds too.

FlyingMoose

Of course there is support for this model among parts of the local population because it is in their interest, not because the model is so great or successful or problem solving or it would have seen wide spread adoption globally.

Most of these low cost airlines are used by regular consumers traveling to holiday destinations or to fly in low-cost labor for other industries from Eastern Europe. I would argue that businesses in the Nordics are more likely to pull their wallets for premium cabins than many other locations.

Not just wage compression, a rising and inflationary already prohibitive cost of living is what doesn't help offset some of the issues. Pilots get significantly more of their expenses paid for than other parts of the working population. Scandinavians would be much more helped with a lower cost of living and lower taxes than slightly more pre-tax pay which with Scandinavian models like percentage based employer fees exponentially raises cost for employers.

Does that really matter though? You clearly speak English. Its between getting a room you can afford or willing to pay for or one you do not. I guess the hotel industry is much further ahead in the outsourcing game than airlines. Globalization requires a different kind of game to be competitive.

It all comes down to the cost of living and goods in Scandinavia and the need to offset costs such as labor to levels to keep affordability. Scandinavian standards + Scandinavian wages for working class would simply lead to empty airplanes and empty hotels because everything is excessively overpriced due to wages. Not having a legal minimum wage to benchmark wages and cost is really disruptive but there is no explanation for basic goods and services costing 3-4x than in neighbor Germany. This is again reflective of the harm unions cause for consumers.