SAS marked its recent accession to SkyTeam by holding a media event in Copenhagen, Denmark, on September 17, 2024, at which a number of announcements were made.
The most relevant of these was the confirmation that, following its exit from restructuring procedures and the formalization of its switch to the Air France-KLM and SkyTeam, the Scandinavian carrier is preparing to resume growth.
Most of this growth will take place in Copenhagen (the carrier’s reorganization has left the Danish state as one of its top shareholders), with 15 new routes to be launched from the Danish capital in the 2025 summer season.
These will link Copenhagen Airport, Kastrup (CPH) to a handful of cities across Europe (Krakow, Madrid, Budapest, Lyon, Valencia, Malta, Bucharest, Milan Linate, Seville, Turku, Kristiansand, Harstad/Narvik and Bodø). SAS is also bringing back its domestic route to Billund (BLL), on Denmark’s Jutland peninsula.
But the highlight of the announcements is the launch of a five-weekly nonstop service to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA), which will become the carrier’s 11th destination in North America. Seattle had previously been served by SAS, but the route was cancelled in 2009.
SAS will also increase frequencies on 15 other existing routes out of Copenhagen while maintaining its current flight program out of the airline’s other two hubs, at Oslo Gardermoen (OSL) and Stockholm-Arlanda (ARN).
A seasonal service between Oslo and New York (JFK) will also be introduced during the summer season. This announcement is in line with SAS’ CEO, Anko van der Werff’s words during an encounter with the media at the 2024 IATA AGM conference. The CEO said SAS would focus its hub activity at Copenhagen but would exploit long-haul opportunities at other Scandinavian airports when opportunities arose to do so.
In Sweden, another of its core markets, SAS has entered into a long-term partnership with regional carrier BRA. The turboprop operator will operate several Swedish domestic routes and feeder services into Copenhagen under a wet-lease arrangement with SAS.
Speaking at the Copenhagen event, SAS Chief Commercial Officer (CCO), Paul Verhagen, announced that the carrier is planning to introduce a fully-fledged business class on its European network.
At the moment, SAS offers two service classes on short-haul routes, SAS Go and SAS Plus, but the latter is essentially an upgraded economy class product. However, in the future, SAS’ premium offering will also have some of the elements traditionally associated with business class products such as the empty middle seat.
SAS is also going to rebrand its product classes to Business, Premium Economy and Economy to align them with those used by most of its alliance partners.
The Scandinavian carrier also presented publicly its newly designed uniforms for cabin and ground crew.
Also in attendance was SkyTeam’s CEO, Patrick Roux, who spoke with AeroTime to highlight some of the key points of SAS’ recent accession to SkyTeam.
