Netherlines

Rebooking on an earlier or later flight on the same day free of charge regardless of travel class is good news.
The CEO said that more benefits for Diamond members are planned and to be rolled out soon.

A more exclusive lounge experience for Diamond members should be top priority.

ilikemiles

where has this been reported? 🙄

GUWonder

How, where and why? To help SAS cut its lounge food and beverage service costs for *G economy and SASPlus flyers by using the shell game of taking away from the many to give back less while concentrating the “give back” value into the hands of the few(er) EBDs?

Netherlines

To attract more revenue and to reward the most loyal customers as there's little incentive to keep on flying on SK metal after hitting Gold.
Miles&More is shifting in that direction as of 2024 and the 2 budget members of Star Alliance in Europe A3 and SK sre heading in the same direction.

​​Mr vd Werff the CEO was present at the Diamond event and he spoke like a man on a mission.

CPH-Flyer

Lufthansa did that many years ago, with HON Circle and the creation of the first class lounges. Giving an incentive to fly LH group beyond getting Star Alliance Gold, though for quite a number of years, only business class and first class counts.

Earning wise, Senator is higher than Diamond already, but is just the regular star gold of LHG. Frequent Traveller level gets lounge access in Lufthansa group business class lounges, though slightly lower threshold than EBG.

I would wonder where LHG would be heading from here?

The problem for SK in providing a more exclusive lounge experience for Diamonds is really the layout of the lounges, the current SAS Gold Lounges are too big to only cater to Diamonds and above, and the SAS Business Lounges are too small to add all the *G flyers who are not Diamonds. I think SK will have different calls on their cash than a major rebuild of lounges for the foreseeable future.
Or should they have Finnair style laminated A4 sheets to put on chairs "This is for Diamond members only"? There are too many for that to work in a practical way. Imagine the number of people they would need to monitor and manage this, the only reason it sort of worked for AY was that the Lumo members in the old Premium Lounge were escorted to the seats. Sort of.

Anyone who has taken an evening flight from Haneda with access to the ANA Lounge will know that the SAS Gold Lounges are calm heavens with plenty of free seating at peak hours.

I am all for increasing the overall set of perks for Diamonds, but generally, it is probably not going to be anything of great cost to SK unless the qualification threshold goes up as well. But maybe some milestone awards above 90K qualifying points could work well.

GUWonder

Let’s take the SAS lounges at CPH, ARN and OSL — as those are the biggest three lounges SAS has AFAIK — and assume SAS is not able and willing to pay much more to get more space contiguous with the current lounges.

At ARN, sometimes the lounge is so packed that to carve out a Diamond only space would mean making the SK lounge experience worse for the vast majority of current users at peak times.

At CPH, there’s more than enough space to toy around but what for other than a food and drink room for EBDs?

And OSL is more like ARN than it is like CPH.a

SAS doesn’t have the big money or even the business traffic nowadays to justify pouring a lot of money into facilities to cater to the EBD captives who will come SAS’s way anyway; and it would cost probably too much to try to pull a lot of high fare premium passengers from other airlines. And given what is going on with housing costs — actually debt-servicing — for the highest 10% income earners in the continental Scandinavian countries, it may be a while before available disposable income for discretionary luxury purchases even grows back to what it used to be a couple of years back.

Netherlines

But the let's keep it this way because it's always been this way stance isn't going to help SAS a great deal either.

At CDG at the wonderful 2F Salon Air France there's a seperate section for Platinum Ultimates,at LHR the Concord room,some Senator Lounges have small Hon Circle sections within the Lounge like in Berlin Brandenburg.More revenue means more rewards but for some reason it doesn't work that way in the Eurobonus Scheme.

The system in the Nordics is the odd one out,gifting away Gold Cards and it's costing SAS a lot of money..At the Lufti Group only a Hon Circle member can gift a Senator Card.

And i'm not suggesting taking privileges away from other members as i'm happy with a quick coffee even in the SAS Gold Lounge

CPH-Flyer

But what is the count difference between Platinum Ultimate, BA GGL, or HON compared to Diamond? EBD members are way too many to get the services of the others you mention. Make Pandion an official level with a qualifying requirement around 300-400K with at least half coming from SK metal flights, then you have a group that is similarly sized to AF, BA, or LH top tiers.

What special does LH do for Senator members in the lounges? That's really your comparison to Diamond.

Baker421

I am Scandinavian based, and maintain both EBG and Senator status for one reason only - I can bring my family of five in with me to both SAS lounges and Senator lounges. But I do feel I am the demographic that SAS has no use for. I maintain EBG through credit card spend only. I hardly ever fly them, and when I do it is almost always on award tickets. So in a way, I think it's quite fair to give those who actually do fly SAS (so much to reach Diamond) something more.

GUWonder

I am the demographic for which SAS has no use.

[Maybe SAS could tie up deeper with LH M&M and just sort of call it a day (of mourning) for SAS EuroBonus.]

But absent gutting lounge access on domestic and/or regional flights and cutting back on award space on SK flights, I won’t lose or gain much of anything from whatever SAS has in mind with lounge benefits for EBD.

Absent being able and willing to increase spending and what are marketing expenditures in some way, SK’s probably going to be more inclined to taking privileges away from a bigger group of members if wanting to give more privileges to a smaller group of members — whether we are suggesting they should do so or not, that’s how things have tended to go in the FFP space where cost-control and delivering on improved margins and profits is the order of the day. A feel-good EBD-only area at CPH? I could see that getting more packed than the general SAS Gold and Business lounge areas. At ARN, any Diamond-only carve out without cutting back a lot on the SK*G numbers will make things worse for the bulk of the *Gs and business class customers there — and it could possibly even make things worse for EBDs too given this stuff has consequence with traffic flow patterns in lounges.

The SK FFP membership rolls probably are but a tiny fraction of the membership rolls which AF-KL has and what the LH group carriers have; and SK seems to have a very high proportion of its flying home market customers having SK*G status. That there and other things give SK a financial headwind with regard to lounge games even before considering how the Scandinavian market can’t really compare so nicely to the French and German-language speaking markets in Europe.

SK has a very fine balancing act to try to pull off: squeeze a lot more money out of people chasing acquisition/retention of SK*G status levels without alienating those home market customers who may jump ship and/or cut back on SK travel if the price of having such SK status rises too much. Keeping in mind that it’s probably the SK EBGs and EBDs who are seeing much bigger increases (in absolute terms denominated in kronor) to their “basic necessities” costs — basic not necessarily being basic — than infrequent Scandinavian flyers, not sure how SAS is going to pull this magic trick at this time without taking from the many/more in order to give to the fewer (while also reducing their own costs) and not risk alienating even more of their customer base that may be migrating away from SAS loyalty as it is. It will be interesting to see what goes on with the SAS credit cards in Sweden and Norway, as that could tell a good story about erosion of customer loyalty from SAS’s most loyal home market customers.

Jainzar

In the SAS Eurobonus news section of Scandinavian countries.
https://www.sas.se/eurobonus/

CPH-Flyer

You are probably a fairly good profit member, you get your status points via your credit card company purchasing them from Eurobonus, and use the resulting miles on SK flights, and mainly use the status to access SK's own lounges.

I mainly earn my miles from other airlines, so that's a positive. But I mainly use my status in non SK lounges and mainly redeem on partners. So I do probably end up being less of a focus customer than many.

Then again Aegean Airlines clearly made it a strategy for a while to generate cash from having a lot of members never flying with them, so we are likely not all bad business for SK.

Jainzar

Many years ago I thought the same, but nowadays I say it ranks quite low. I don‘t see how it fits into the greater picture.

SK moved many years ago from having SH C to Economy Extra / SAS Plus as their SH top product. SK removed a few years ago the voluntary priority security and lounge access (i.e. non-*A lounges).

As Diamond I hence cut all SK travel from destinations where they don‘t offer lounge access and moved these destinations to AY. I usually anyway have a connection so moving was no burden.

Nick Art

First of all this was my first reaction hearing to this:


Seems like good news, certainly a very valuable benefit. More benefits to come for EBD are certainly also good news, I'm interested to hear more once more news come out. Would be very intriguing to see if there are other changes coming to SAS, be it benefits or other changes to service.

oliver2002

Hope springs eternal... SAS is crawling along under Ch11 protection. There is not much they can give out... lets see what the traffic figures show on July 7.