The boards choice of CEO decides what kind the airline will be in the future

The board of SAS a traditional networks airline with a service, is about to pick a new CEO and thereby indirectly deciding on what kind of airline they want the company to be in the future. 

Al Baker the boss of Qatar airways wich is a 35% investor in IAG the parentcompany of BA commented in an article in the Sunday Times yesterday that the management of BA under Cruz leadership lost sight of what made BA. It became a penny pinching airline that where selling food instead of serving food.

Is that what SAS owners wants with their airline. A low fares competitor that instead of competing with route network, connections and non-quareling service sees price as their most important factor. In that case they will get plenty of competition in the Scandinavian market with Wizz, Norwegian, Ryanair and newcomers Flyr and long haul Norse all ready for a race to the bottom.

However I doubt all Scandinavians look only to price when it comes to picking their mode of air travel. Plenty of people with some money but not so much that they go private jet, that is looking for a litle extra and even more important less hassle. I'm sure even some of the board members of SAS are in this group. But that's not what Cruz managed to do with BA. In the process he almost de-anglified what most still see as the british flag carrier. Is that what they want to happen to SAS. 

It's not enough to know how to run an airline cheap. It is also important to know what else makes potential customers pick it over all others, and again and again. And for legacy carriers the history that made them what they are today. And that varies from carrier to carrier. You don't get that info from all the yes people you find in the office. You get that from taking the pulse of what the press and the people that comment in the press says about you. 

You can't take a person from Ryanair and expect SAS to become as lean as that airline. No more than you can take a person known for union strife/busting and expect him/her to work out in the very socialised world of Scandinavian work relations, like getting the CEO of Wizz to run SAS. SAS will never be BA and shouldn't either try to. What works in GB don't work as well in Sweden/Denmark and even less Norway.  


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