And you can't actually fly EWR - PHL neither on *A nor SkyTeam...

Flying to Canada via USA is best to avoid due to immigration and customs (but of course possible).

Yeah, that's a 90 min by car. But you can fly BWI-PHL......

The worst immigration that I have ever experienced was YVR (Vancouver). Holy crap was that a long and slow queue.

ARN-EWR arrives early in the day and has easy immigration, as I frequently preach here. So ARN-EWR-YUL/YYZ is not a bad idea.

That long and slow queue must have been the same one that we were in. Was the inspector a young fella, looked about 21 or 22 years of age, probably straight out of university? I couldn't believe it. He was asking everyone -- even the middle-aged couple ahead of us with American passports -- to show their return tickets!

cheers,

Henry

It was a massive hall with many inspection stations. I think there was one line for Canadains that was a bit shorter and they started to allow people into this one. I would estimate that there was 200 people ahead of me in the queue. They processed people extremely slowly, took breaks and chatted amongst themselves casually rather than speeding things up.

I remember a young punk customs guy was extremely rude and was insulting me ("Can't you read? Are you stupid, eh?!?!") because I folded the declaration form. I also filled out the French side just for the hell of it. I told him "to get lost", which is probably not the best idea to a customs peon...... but no retaliation.

Anyway, this was my worst immigration/customs experience anywhere in the world. I realize that it was probably on par with arriving at IAD ca. 15:00 on any given day as a foreginer, but still......... "Oh Can-a-da, our home and native land!" :D

To get back to the original question:
IMHO there is no strategy. Lars Lindgren did not get the extra two planes he has been chanting about for so long - simply because he could not present the business case to proof the profitability behind it. Wonder why he then asked in the first place

SK are closing CPH-PVG and replacing it with ARN-PEK. ARN-BKK is being opened at the same time they are seriuosly disrupting CPH-BKK - and rerouting their much bespoken biz-passengers on Y tickets to LH M :rolleyes:

I would agree with AHO - and say that Mr. Lindgren's new strategy is put as many of the intercon birds in his own back yard - removing them from CPH. I for one has changed my Asia flight to other carriers.

IMHO still needs to proof he is competent to the position he is holding - he has not done so far in almost 4 years he has hold the post. Maybe 30+ years in SAS is not a qualification in itself. ;) Maybe it would be better for SAS if he followed Anders Ehrling, CEO SAS Sverige on his 7 weeks (!) vacation.

Maybe we should buy Lars a ticket around the SAS network in P-class - it would open his eyes - especially when looking his EB account after suffering the P-class.

:D Keep in mind though that P-class tickets does not come cheap - I am not sure that I would allow my self to spend that kind of money.

Yeah ... noticed ... I cannot believe how I forgot the worse part of it but I recently got a reminder: TMP-CPH-TXL-MUC-CPH-TMP in W(/T in LH) and paid 440 EUR - received the generous 875 points from SAS. Still thinking whether I should return the points and tell them to go insult someone else.

Well ... I am going offtopic. But similar thing happens also with longhaul flights - you pay quite generous fee for SAS and you receive basically very little amount of points. And at the same time you have to wish that SAS doesn't change their mind during the wait time before your flight and cancel your route.

Haha..funny you should mention YVR. My last visit there in august also ranks as my worst experience when it comes to waiting to get through immigration.
Took me close to 2 hrs to get through.

I don't think that SAS is doing something wrong with their treatment of Y passengers! Please note that there is the option to reroute to TG, and there Economy Extra class passengers will receive TG Premium Economy!
This will be the option for Extra passengers. If they decide not to go for TG, and want LH, then they will receive Economy class. I don't think there is anything wrong in this!

But I fully agree with the poor service record they have now on cancellations! Hopefully they have made up their mind now on routes to have! :rolleyes:

Of course it is impossible for us to tell for sure but if we consider the passengers that are affected, keeping in mind that most (all?) tickets in Y+ are flexible.

Either the passengers are

a) leisure travellers wanting the extra comfort or
b) business travellers buying those tickets to achive flexibility (and comfort)

Group a) can probably replan their schedule somewhat to either take the TG flight or spend an extra day in Thailand.

Group b) bought it to have flexible tickets. This means that they have several options. Cancel altogether, take their money and buy BA WT+, or go with the TG alternative. Not that many business travellers will have fully flexible tickets booked several months in advanced. If you need to stick to the budget due to strict travel policies you most likely end up in M class anyway.

No award travellers are affected since these seats can't be booked.

Looking at the seatmaps for a few days in July that remains in operation I could only see a very few number of prereserved seats (except 14B and 14G which I think are blocked).

So in reality - how many customers in Y+ was really affected by this?

Regardless of this, SK needs to make up their mind and have a trustable operation. Let's hope we don't have as much downtime as we did last summer.

Fair point. I just have trouble with the fact that SAS choose to open a new route to BKK - but at the same is having quite a bit of troubl maintaining the route they have in place.

At the same time they still have not announced with route will be negatively affected by the ARN-BKK route (which I can understand they want to push as far as possible - but let us be frank one of the routes will).

An oh by the way when did SAS last open an intercon route that was succesfull - and they did not close down again relatively quick after it was opened: DEL, KIX (94), HKG (92), PVG. The last one was IAD in May of 01 I believe. Not a good track record.

I had some words with a guy at SAS Intercont on Friday about the PVG route. The route was a disaster, they were not even close to make money on it.

Must be GUWonders fault. :rolleyes:

Well, those seats would probably ended up empty without him. Or..?