It’s been a big year for Scandinavian Airlines System, better known as SAS. The airline has long struggled with poor labor relations, high costs, conflicting priorities between its three state owners (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), and absence of a joint venture partner over the Atlantic. A founding member of Star Alliance, it was generally assumed that eventually SAS would end up under the Lufthansa Group umbrella, but that did not happen. Instead, it has joined forces with Air France-KLM and that means huge changes are underway.
The catalyst for this recent realignment was yet another insolvency following so, so many years of instability. This time, the plan that came together actually seems like a functional one. Norway had left the airline in 2018, but it wasn’t until this latest round that Sweden bowed out. Denmark opted to stay in the game and inject more money, but it was the 19.9 percent stake acquired by Air France-KLM with the assumption that it will have a controlling stake eventually that really shook things up.
The switch from Star Alliance to SkyTeam happened on Sep 1, and with that came a new codeshare with Delta and the launch of Copenhagen – Atlanta. Seattle follows next summer. SAS is also working to better align its product, bringing back a Eurobiz (blocked middle) class that matches what AF-KL offers. These initiatives are all relatively obvious moves, but there will be a longer term realignment that takes more time.
The goal here is to make Copenhagen into a third connecting airport in the airline’s network. It has already built out Paris/CDG to about what it can handle. (Anyone who has flown through there might disagree that it can even handle that.) Amsterdam remains a great connecting hub, but the government has made it clear that it wants fewer flights, and the pressure has been ratcheting up. Copenhagen provides that opportunity to nicely add a third hub into the mix with a complementary geography which can take pressure off the others.
And Copenhagen really is the story of this whole deal. That’s where the change has started, and it’s where most of the change will likely end up happening. To get a sense of where this is going, I dug into Cirium to see how networks have shifted over the last 20 years. Let’s start with long-haul.
Data via Cirium, red is seasonal, green is new (Seattle and Toronto are summer seasonal, Miami operates in winter only and isn’t on the map)
In 2005, SAS had a long-haul network that was balanced between East and West. But by 2025, that balance will have shifted dramatically. The presence in Asia has shrunk. Even Bangkok which has long ties to the Nordic market is now only seasonal. Instead, all the growth is in the West. Call this the anti-Finnair strategy (you know, before the whole Russia problem changed that).
After shrinking back down to only a handful of cities in the US by 2005, it has now gone back into the West Coast in a big way, added Atlanta along with Boston and Toronto, and has connected more dots. Next summer, JFK – Oslo even starts up for the first time. This marks a real shift, but it’s one that makes sense.
SAS had a long history with Continental and Newark that led it to have nearly all of its service in New York focused on Newark. That continued when United and Continental merged. But now being aligned with Delta and Air France-KLM means it needs to shift more over to JFK where those airlines have their hub.
Perhaps short-haul is where it gets most interesting. Take a look at Copenhagen to start.
Jul data via Cirium, green is new next year
Copenhagen used to be a more balanced East-West hub, but now it has become more North-South. It’s no surprise with Russia being cut off from the network, but it’s really more of a growth story going north and south, including more than a dozen new routes already for next year. There is more flying into smaller cities in other Scandinavian countries in the north, and there is more sun flying in the south. This is more about leisure and visiting friends and relatives traffic.
This kind of move makes good sense when you think about how this hub works in the context of Air France-KLM. It can take traffic from the US and efficiently send it south. Copenhagen is well-positioned for that, especially going southeast. But this also will help increase connectivity within Europe. Now people in places like Bodø can get to much of Europe with a single stop.
When you throw in other somewhat larger cities in Scandinavia that already have decent connectivity on KLM via Amsterdam, this creates a compelling option in terms of frequencies and destinations. It’ll take some time to kickstart the hub through network changes, but the airline is not wasting any time.
Even though Denmark is the big focus, that doesn’t mean Norway and Sweden get ignored completely, at least not yet. This is really about connecting the whole of Scandinavia into the network, and that means remaining relevant to the locals in places like Oslo and Stockholm in some way. So, let’s look at those networks, starting with Norway.
Jul data via Cirium
The Oslo network is kind of funny. It’s as if in 2005 they just left the right half of the map off and fixed it in 2025. If you draw a line from Oslo to Rome, everything west looks pretty much the same. But it has now added a lot more leisure in the south and southeast. If people in Oslo need their sun vacations, SAS makes it easier than it did before. I do wonder how much of that may end up going away over time, however.
Sweden is a more interesting scenario.
Jul data via Cirium
It’s pretty remarkable that SAS didn’t even serve Spain from Sweden in 2005, yet now it serves six cities plus two in Portugal. Again, it’s a leisure play, but the bigger move is a new partnership with BRA, Braathens Regional.
SAS is effectively going to start outsourcing connectivity in Sweden to BRA, so it doesn’t have to handle any of that itself, at least in smaller cities. We’ll see how this one evolves since it’s a new development.
Like I said, there’s a lot more that has to happen here as SAS finds its place in the Air France-KLM/Delta world, but you can already see where this strategy is going. And it’s going fairly quickly.
I’d say the success of this plan relies on untangling and fixing the mess that is labor at SAS, but this is Air France-KLM. Labor peace generally seems optional. Just being a part of this bigger network with a clear charge should help give SAS a chance to become viable for the first time in a long time. Maybe.
28 comments on “SAS Starts to Adapt to Its New French (and Dutch) Overlords”
While CPH was always the largest of SK’s long haul stations, it never made sense as to why the airline didn’t exploit the airport even further as a larger connecting hub. ARN’s operating costs (and its market, are simply not big enough) and neither is OSL for that matter. As to NYC, SK will likely have to decamp fully to JFK to fully exploit the SkyTeam offering in the largest US-Europe TATL market. SK moved to EWR in 1988 and exclusively operated from there for the region, until 2022, when it added one flight to CPH out of JFK. The one consideration are a small number of large, Scandi companies with large ops in and around EWR that could see one flight remain there, but ultimately, SK will need to make a full shift over. The opportunities for CPH as a connecting hub are though somewhat limited. Geography isn’t on its side. It is a far nicer, more efficient and less chaotic place to connect vs. CDG or AMS, but doesn’t have the scale or frequencies to balance the other two out. Yet.
I’m rather surprised they’re bringing back the Seattle route. I figured if anything they might try SLC first, but I guess they figure ATL and New York gives them enough connecting options.
One of the sad things about them switching to SkyTeam is the lack of Asia and Oceania options. –The Chinese airlines are pretty much nonstarters for a lot of travelers, and Korean Air doesn’t have service to Scandinavia, so for now SAS has had to extend their agreement with Singapore, but I can’t imagine SkyTeam is thrilled with that.
I imagine Korean Air may enter Scandinavia sooner rather than later. ANA recently launched HND-ARN, and the Koreans don’t like to be bested by the Japanese…
Vietnam Airways has entered the chat…
“SAS had a long history with Continental and Newark that led it to have nearly all of its service in New York focused on Newark. That continued when United and Continental merged. But now being aligned with Delta and Air France-KLM means it needs to shift more over to JFK where those airlines have their hub.”
If I remember correctly the Continental/ SAS codeshare was one of the earliest such agreements before the floodgates opened. As a result, SAS was the first international carrier to serve Newark.
SEAN – This was also the first of those failed global equity efforts that killed many an airline (hello, Swissair…). SAS bought nearly 10% of Continental in 1988. Then a couple years later, it almost doubled that stake. That’s what took out Frank Lorenzo. It was a financial disaster for SAS, but the commercial ties remained.
Oh, I see. That was the part I didn’t know… thanks.
“ …back into the West Coast in a big way, added Atlanta along with Boston and Toronto…” perhaps this should be East Coast?
We see new additions to DL hubs, will SAS start to pull out of UA hubs? EWR->JFK may not happen due to slot. SFO and IAD each has their own reason to exist. However, can SAS really fill those routes without a UA feed.
Perhaps connecting through MSP as there’s a huge concentration of residents from Norway, Sweeden etc in Minnesota as well as Wisconsin… Yah.
Saying that there should be lots of VFR traffic from MSP to Denmark/Norway/Sweden because of the ancestry connection is like saying that there should be lots of VFR traffic from MKE & DTW to Germany, or from BOS to Ireland & Italy. The connection is almost entirely multiple generations removed, and few residents in the MSP area have family that they communicate with (or visit) in Scandinavia.
There are a lot of people of Nordic ancestry in Minnesota, but very few people there who were born in the Nordic countries, or whose parents were. Excluding those from UK, Ireland, France, & Germany, in 2022, there were < 4000 people in Minnesota who were born in Northern or Western Europe (source: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/data/state-profiles/state/demographics/MN ). There are more foreign-born residents of Minnesota from Germany, France, Vietnam, Mexico, India, Russia, the Phillippines, and a number of other countries than the Nordic countries.
Apologies if that comment sounded too mean/rude; I didn’t mean it that way.
I know that the Scandinavia connection is one of the the first things that comes to mind for many of us (myself included) when we think of MSP (or vice versa; MSP is one of the first airports that comes to mind when we think of “obvious” flight routes to the US from the Nordic countries), but I got curious enough to Google it.
Recent immigration trends and concentrations of groups of people of specific national orgins can be very fascinating. For example, while people traditionally think of Boston as being Irish/Italian (due to immigration from ~100+ years ago), the greater Boston area has the largest number of Portuguese speakers outside of Brasil & Portgual, with hundreds of thousands of people in the area from Brasil, Cape Verde, & Portugal.
North of Boston (Lowell area), there’s a much smaller (but still very significant) population of people from Southeast Asia (Laos/Cambodia/Vietnam). In NH, there’s a small but notable group of people from Nepal (of all places). Parts of Michigan and Minnesota have a number of relatively recent immigrants from the Middle East / Levant.
The population of the twin cities is far more diverse then one would first suspect, but the Nordic influence remains even if several generations removed. I do know someone who works it my local TJ’s who is from Wisconsin & that accent of hers is so prominent.
MSP-CPH is a no brainer, I assume we will see it soon, if only seasonally. I live in MSP, and there is a huge interest in travel to Scandinavia from here. The cruise ship crowd is huge here for retirees going back to research the family history (my dad did this just this summer), to younger folks who want to explore Norway. I think it would be a great route for the alliance. Sean’s right, we’re a few generations removed, but we all tout our Nordic heritage up here!
Also, Columbus used a Norwegian map.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see, if/when SAS is part of the full JV, to see flights to MSP.
But make no mistake, that will be 100% because of the airline network and 0% due to any Scandinavian ancestry in Minnesota. That immigration all happed about a century ago at the latest.
No, I meant West Coast. In 2005 it was only Seattle and they left that too. In the last few years, they have rebuilt the West Coast with LAX, SFO, and now Seattle. The second part of that sentence was a separate initiative.
The biggest reason for SAS’ willingness to go with AF/KL was that they could be treated as a first class member by being in the Joint venture, something the Lufthansa group never wanted or would permit.
CPH plus AMS and CDG provide an incredible wall in western continental Europe between N. America and the rest of continental Europe.
Getting rid of the split allegiance to Norway and Sweden allows SAS (now really Danish Airlines) to create a true hub at CPH and they seem very willing to fulfill that role.
Given that Italy is a huge local market but has very little value as a connecting market, trading SAS for ITA was definitely a big win for SkyTeam.
Next up is the future of airlines in the Iberian peninsula
Tim,
I do find that surprising as Continental/ SAS as I noted had one of the first code sharing agreements going back to the late 1980’s. The first such agreement was between US Airways & British Airways. I remember it as it was quite newsworthy at the time & even more so when BA switched with American.
The BA / US agreement emerged after the SK/CO tie up, in the very early 1990s and it was fairly limited to just PIT, CLT, and PHL. BA ditched US quickly later on to tie up with AA.
I agree and as a US-based UA/*A Gold flyer who travels to Europe frequently, I’m disappointed in the loss of SK from the Alliance. While the majority of my travel was always funneled through FRA/BRU/MUC (and occasionally AMS) anyway, SK was always a great option, particularly since their west bound bank of flights departed in the late afternoon from CPH. CPH is light years easier to navigate, the lounge is fantastic (when compared to BRU and AMS) and despite the occasional long walk, it was really well run. My only complaint that with the DKK being so strong, food and everything was always more expensive than it needed to be.
I am somewhat optimistic about ITA entering the *A but being ORD based, SK was always a good inexpensive option that I’ll miss, especially since it meant I didn’t have to fly LOT. Congrats to SAS and all the Skyteam flyers. You won this round.
The DKK is pegged to the Euro.
This misses entirely the local competitive enviromnent: the rise and fall of short-haul Norwegian, the hubs (some temporary) of Ryanair, the growth of easyjet and Wizz, generally. More has happened inbthe local market environments that at the partnershio kevel. Not everything is alliance-related. CPH is bigger also because SK has shifted away from other pressures (dropping secondary Norway cities to Oslo and now serving from CPH; for example)
Another key factor in this – IMHO – is supplementing and allowing for growth somewhere other than AMS. The COVID and post-COVID actions by the Dutch government to limit and the related understaffing of security and immigration has made AMS no longer the connecting jewel that it once was. Skyteam needed an option in Europe other than CDG. I don’t expect that SAS at CPH becomes as large as KLM at AMS, but they will certainly take some of its current traffic and growth.
That is almost exactly what Cranky wrote in the 4th paragraph.
Just recently flew for a business trip SAS LAX—CPH-MUC & AMS-CPH-LAX on an economy ticket and was quite pleased with the service, comfort and ease of connection through CPH. As a Delta Platinum I was able to enter my Delta FF# while using their app and gain access at the lounge in CPH. I will look into using them again.
Glad SAS found a supportive BRA to take some pressure off their lower route map.
Don’t forget Miami. Miami switches seasons with Toronto. It’s also still served from Stockholm in addition to Copenhagen.
Also the new Seattle flight is seasonal as well, not year-round.
Are you just ignoring the inaccuracies of your article?
Toronto and Seattle are summer-only. They switch with Miami (CPH+ARN) and Bangkok in the winter.