FlyingMoose

Food on SK in the US -> EU direction tends to be better because it has US catering and the food is more normal and less issues with portion sizes. No weird cold fish, miniature mains or the smallest slice of pie dessert you've ever seen in your life. I still miss simple things like, instead of just grabbing an empty glass without any kind of verbal communication or confirmation that it was ok to take the glass, asking if the passenger wants another drink. Or more rounds in the cabin to ask if there is any service that can be provided instead of joking in the galley with colleagues for 5 hours straight. SK needs more customer focus and customers need to not constantly get the feeling that they are a nuisance to the staff in between their striking periods.

Delta gave me 25k miles and a $250 voucher last time I had a broken IFE incident even though I swapped with the person next to me who wanted to sleep rather than watch content. One ticket to the Diamond service and it just got sorted out.

The issues with LH in my book is less so the service or the product but the fact that you have to go through FRA or MUC which just eliminates them as these are terrible airports. I'll do LX J if I'm flying in the right direction. I just did LX to JNB in J, timing of the flights was great, layover at ZRH was great, lounge at ZRH was great, food was great, IFE was great, service was efficient just not very warm. It just doesn't compare to SK at all.

GUWonder

I am not a fan of LH either, but mainly because it’s nothing special and connecting via FRA and MUC are less than ideal for me. But I do think the SAS FAs on my TATL flights have become warmer toward me since March 2020 and been more consistent in 2022 than they used to be.

jamesbrownontheroad

When the A321LR were announced I did wonder if they would be delivered to SAS Ireland, now SAS Connect. It might have created an interesting comparison to have different operating units on the wide-body and narrow-body TATL flights, hopefully giving SAS Mainline crews a bit of internal competition.

nacho

Wait until the new C and F roll out, they look amazing.

LH C is really ... outdated hardware, meh in service and insane YQ (except redeeming with UA miles). I think that's why award spaces are easier to find than other airlines

Eurodings (Eurowings) is not nice at all - flew with them once (on UA award ticket) and once is more than enough - zero *G recognition except UA and LH.

FlyingMoose

Eurowings is terrible, really wonder how their hub is doing at ARN since Swedes love terrible airlines they must be booming.

jamesbrownontheroad

They're doing badly. 26 December they cancelled the following for NS23:

Stockholm Arlanda – Alicante
Stockholm Arlanda – Barcelona
Stockholm Arlanda – Birmingham
Stockholm Arlanda – Irakleion
Stockholm Arlanda – Rhodes

Source: https://www.aeroroutes.com/eng/221227-ewns23cxld

nussle

I am not too sure if this is a joke or not???

GreatDane

Agree with OP.
SK longhaul product is back.
recently flew LAX and ORD - solid hard and soft product. Much better than LH for sure.

Cookoovaya

I was given a chocolate ball that had a best before date from last week. Not a big deal but not great experience and lasting impression either.

GUWonder

Can't say I'm surprised, but to me this just goes to show that SAS is not tight on quality control or doesn't really care much about customer perception (or at least non-Scandinavian customer perception).

Not sure what it is about food procurement nowadays in Scandinavia -- in Sweden even a bit more so than Denmark -- that seems to come with there being more short-date expiring and expired goods showing up on shelves and out for delivery than before, but I think it may be a sign that supply chains and logistics are getting extra sloppy, extra desperate or something else that makes me extra wary about food quality in the region nowadays.

Maybe it's a sign of the times that Noma is shutting down -- not that SAS could ever deliver like that -- instead of carrying on beyond next year and putting out things beyond their "best before date".

jamesbrownontheroad

Here in Sweden, selected branches of ICA (supermarket) have experimented with a new way of discounting imminently date-expired produce.
Rather than allocate an employee to check the fridges daily looking for things due to expire today or tomorrow, now it's up to customers to find them and scan them at a special machine in the store, which prints a discount coupon.

oliver2002

SAS hardly checks the food expiry date, thats the caterer who has been tasked by SAS to supply them. AFAIR SAS sold their catering wing to GateGourmet in 2009.

AverageHighFlyer

The return trip (MIA-CPH-LHR) was not quite as uneventful. About 10 hours before departure, I got a text from SAS that the MIA-CPH flight was delayed by about 1h30m. Not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but annoying since I had a tight (but legal, and on the same ticket) 45m connection at CPH, and the next CPH-LHR flight was not until 7h later. That said, I do appreciate the advance notice - it meant I could turn up at the airport much later than I would normally be comfortable with.

Check-in at MIA went fine. The TK lounge was absolutely packed, and they had opened an extra room outside the regular lounge for overflow. Not a great experience, but also not bad; let’s just say I was happy I hadn’t gone to the airport earlier.

The flight itself was great. The crew were friendly and attentive, the food was good, I can’t really think of anything to complain about. I went to sleep, and when I woke up I could see SAS had automatically rebooked my CPH-LHR flight to BA, which meant I had to only wait 1.5h instead of 7 at CPH. I was initially surprised by this, but it makes sense - saves them having to pay compensation. Also very happy to say that they had booked me in Club Europe (I was in SAS Business on the long haul, and Plus on the short haul).

At the lounge in CPH, I was able immediately to get a shower, followed by breakfast. The only hiccup was that the BA staff didn’t turn on the “boarding” status until last minute for some reason, so when I showed up at the gate 21 minutes before departure, they had already boarded everyone else. Which wouldn’t have mattered, except they needed to do some manual override to get my bag loaded, and while they assured me this would be fine, it wasn’t - my bag didn’t make it onto the flight. Ironically, it travelled on the next SAS departure 7 hours later. Annoyingly, it took them 3 days to deliver it to me.

In summary - not a perfect experience because of the IRROPS, but I feel SAS dealt with it excellently and proactively. Arguably the problem with the bag was BA’s fault, not SAS’s.

FlyingMoose

Sweden is a rockstar at making business problems the problem of their customers rather than automating them or reducing the cost of employment.

It is mental in my mind that people agree to this. You either have the system where the employee finds the item and labels them or you have a robot do it. Stores are closed and empty 10 hours each night so you could even have very slow and inefficient robots do this. You can't just pass the problem on to your customers like they've already done with self scanning where the issue was that they didn't put enough employees behind the check outs again because of labor cost. This country desperately needs competition that is more customer friendly.

Or you implement customer friendly improvement like Amazon's Go Stores in the US where you just grab the stuff you need and don't have to check out. This also greatly reduces employee cost and doesn't pass the problem on to the customer.

nacho

The discount was pretty lame - I tried with a salmon side that expired the same day as I was there and it gave 30% discount (8pm).

That salmon is unlikely to be sold so ICA lost the whole revenue by not giving a bigger discount. My impression is that either the higher level management don't know the idea of goods that went straight to trash, or they don't care that they take a loss on the food that can't be sold.