WindowSeatFlyer

I resemble that remark.

JR67

So, is the explosion of idle chitchat on the Eurobonus board a sign that working from home makes us all more efficient and we therefore have more time for this, or a sign that working from home makes us less efficient because we are spending our time on this?

CPH-Flyer

Or a sign that the idle chit chat we would be doing at the office in normal times is being done here instead?

GUWonder

There are more than just those two possibilities, right?

GUWonder

So what’s the longest car traffic jam you’ve ever seen on the bridge between Denmark and Sweden? Sunday had a nearly 4 mile long backup of automobiles that clogged the bridge in the Denmark-bound direction.

fassy

Sounds about right, that is about the distance to the last exit in Sweden (trafikplats Vintrie).

Had that happen a couple of time when they suddenly decided to close the bridge or tunnel for scheduled or unscheduled maintenance. I then get off, park my car and take the train over. But in this situation, probably the trains are not much better.

Nick Art

As this board has quieted down a little again, I wonder if everybody is just busy with the reopening and working or spending time with family and co.

I think it's time for a little retroflection on the past few months now that the end of the horizon is dimly visible.
How's everybody holding up? (Flying wise & personal wise).
I hope nobody has been hit too hard personally or economically here, if at all? No Pandions needing to sell their Pandion scarf yet? (If yes allow me to make an offer )

Has the crisis changed anything for you? Or have you changed because of the crisis? And how will you lot approach travel in the future? The same as usual or totally differently?
What do you think the future on SAS might look like?


To answer my own questions, tossing aside the whole quite sad human and economic factor around the world, I've been holding up quite fine, even enjoying the time with family & co.
It did allow me to get a different perspective of certain things. Including travel, which having it be gone for some time, I appreciate even more now.
As for this year I'm in the progress of postponing my last flights in September to next year, which will then conclude in a year with no planned and done travel at all. So 2020 will be the first year in which I will not have stepped foot on a plane since 1997 (and I was only alive for a few days in 1997).
Only a few months ago I probably would have laughed at you if you told me that.
As for SAS, I hope not too much changes as even if I like to nitpick sometimes, I do actually quite like them.

So here's to staying healthy. Cheers.

Fredrik74

The board is probably dead because summer arrived. I'm going to be hurting tomorrow. For some reason my knees are really red. Last week it was my forearms. I guess it's got to do with biking but i just don't get why, especially since the head and face area is 'fine'.

Since I'm lucky enough to still have a job, and realistically won't have to worry for either myself or family I have seen that I've saved quite a bit of money. The flip side of that is that it's boring to with no trips anywhere. Summer is absolutely nice and I won't feel too disappointed to have to stay in Sweden but I would have wanted to travel in the shoulder season.

CPH-Flyer

Myself, family, friends, and colleagues have basically avoided infections so far. And I only know two people who are job wise affected, so I guess I am in the fortunate group.

Travel wise, I did my last flight in March. At the end of April I was checking when I last had a month without flying, which was in April 2015, I just checked when I last had two months without a flight which was in Aug/Sep 2006. As I will start moving around domestically in Japan in July, there will not be 3 months without a flight this time around. It is a bit annoying that international travel is still mainly blocked. But maybe it is a good time to catch up on my saying that I want to visit all 47 prefectures in Japan. There is a lot to do and see here, so I am not going to run out of destinations for the summer. I am guessing the international travel plans will not be until September the earliest.

When travel starts to open up for real, I do expect my business travel to mostly rebound, and my private trips certainly will.

fassy

Well, I'm bored! And insanely overworked at the same time.

Bored since the normal stimulus of getting around in the world, see people and do stuff is gone. Overworked since the work has become much more difficult and things I used to show now needs extensive documentation and I'm sitting at my desk frantically typing all day.

At least, friends, family and colleagues have been mostly unaffected. Just had on friend and his family being sick, but not too bad and they recovered well enough. From an economic point of view, my industry is largely unaffected even though we see some 20% decline in revenue the last quarter. Let's see how Q3 and Q4 develop.

fassy

Just got the message, travel budget will be cut down indefinitely(*) to only “essential travel for operational reasons, i.e. application engineering fixing machines in the factory”.

why? Because we did too well working without travel. The loss of revenue is minimal compared to the OPEX not spend for travel.

looks like I need to look for a new job if I want to get back to “normal” travel activities.

Not high enough in the chain to fall under the “everything I do is essential” category, since of course the rule doesn’t apply to senior management

(*) at least for rest of 2020 and for the 2021 budget. They might reconsider in 2021 for 2022 if the numbers don’t support the decision.

nacho

You work for a Swedish company? Of course the rule doesn't apply to senior management.

DK is a totally different story - the jobs Mr. has in DK fairly big companies - and it's only CEO level can fly business class. Travel policy applies to everyone except the CEOs.

Their policy is totally understandable - from the management's point of view, if you can get things done online, why do you have to fly to get that done? I know it's better to be there but it's not necessary. I'm sure SAS doesn't like your company's new travel policy

fassy

Well, yes and no. I work for a Swedish company, which is my own... but then contract out to a small US company from Silicon Valley, about 200 employees, half of them state-side, other half European based. They have hired me long term to fill a Director level engineering position. So for all intents and purposes besides tax and official status I probably would say I work for a US company.

Well, that some animals are more equal was always true and I can accept that. Let them fly J, I can survive economy or pay the occasional upgrade myself. But I cannot accept that my life has become tremendously harder because I don't get a travel budget to actual work on projects which drive revenue while the CXO level hops around the world for very little reasons.

I'd say my weekly work hours almost doubled due to the home office and travel restrictions. And I told my boss (which is CXO level) now, this is not acceptable. I was ok doing it for a while as there was no alternative and just to keep the company afloat but this is not a sustainable model and actually make me quite mad, since it shows how little the top brass actually sees what the contributors do on a daily basis to keep going. *rant*

Well, I guess I was never a real good customer anyway. Mostly fly European short-haul Go which I upgrade with my own money to Plus. For long haul mostly with LH group or UA, so almost no revenue for SK which is mostly driven by their insane pricing and bad connection network in the US.

nacho

I guy who works in Swedish packaging giant in Lund told me that he travels 300 days a year - he flies C and he is not CEO or anything like that - you might consider his job - he needs to fly out to their customers to help them with the machines.

SK does have really insane prices to the US where they don't fly to - if you want good connections. You can kind of get by with worse connections for lower prices but if I do that I'd rather go for 016 stock for easier re-routing when there's a schedule change.

fassy

Well, I was quite happy with my travel pattern which is about 3 trips a month, so about 100 days in total I had before Covid-19. Had a 4 days/week, 44 weeks a year job before (10+ years back) including F and J long haul. that wasn't pretty but the miles collected where impressive But won't go back there.

Biggest issue is, that SK often enough doesn't even offer the connections I need. I can construct such connections in the SAS for business booking tool, but then the prices are out of this world. Like 20x the normal fare. No kidding.

While I never have an issue booking via UA or LH.