After several days of extended deadlines the 900 pilots of mainline SAS is on strike

SAS Forward plan is not going well. The savings they where to get from the pilots was just to big a hill to climb for the unions. Not only wouldn't SAS hire back direct 450 pilots let go under the pandemic. The company tried the ruse with som irish underling companies to hire further pilots on new contracts far from scandinavian union influence. A move that didn't work for Norwegian and now has ended in a total 3 country pilot strike for SAS.

Even the last weeks of potential strike has probably brought new bookings down to near 0 because both sides have all the way talked about potential bankruptcy. And now when tens of thousands hollidaymakers every day is looking for alternatives in an already overfull market the SAS reliability it depended on for its necesseraly slightly premium prices is in the dumps. This is a case where all press is not good press.

Wonder how Werf got on in negotiations between swedish, danish and norwegian dealbrokers, unionreps and SAS mgmt mainly represented by a person who's previous jobs included getting writh of the goldrimmed pensions of the company. His presentation after the strike was a fact to the assembled one would presume mostly scandi press was at all in english and even though he was earlier based a couple of years in Stockholm I doubt he picked up much of the language. 

So another of Anko Van der Werf's chrages has ended up in strife with its workers. His previous airline  had in the end to be sortet out by a more mallable to negotiations and agreement follower in the CEO position.

Werf's tone when he came to talk to the press was also seen by many as angry and his words was he didn't care about his employees the pilots but more on how this looked to the potential investors he was courting. Well, investors prefer their CEO's to be able to handle their employees without to much public strife. And specially strife all over the press and that will cost the company millions every day. 

And its not even the last large group of union members that is to fight with SAS this year. A cabin crew member was just in the press saying that their negotiations with the company was still waiting to be starte till after the pilots negotiations.

And what was the big problem. One of the pilot unions even said to thepress it had been willing to agree to type Ryanair t&c's. But its doubtfull if he meant the whole package of more of the pay related to performance and covering of costs the company normaly would pay, rather than the part that gives slightly more total renumeration. Ryanair also adjusts its seasonal production by having a lot of pilots as contractors that only work in the 6-8 demand months and do something else in late autumn, winter and early spring. How much Ryanair pilots fly during the summer months came to light a few years ago when come October-November many of them where out of legal hours for the calendar year.

The other bugbear where the 450 Boeing pilots fired during the pandemic who's only option now was to pay for their own Airbus conversion and be hired back on irish contracts. SAS is prboably very litle generous with theese. Ryanair takes pilots directly from flightschools and bind them to a bond to finance their type rating that Ryanair pays for. A bond that gradually reduces over a few years as long as the pilot stays wih the company. The conversion of all of them wouldn't be that expensive and probably not worth the loss in a strike of even 1 day.

And this strike will if previous pilot strikes in the company is a standard, last for about a week. The last one cost the company 65 million euro. 4 weeks will halve the company's cash balance and most likely leed to a chapter 11 type reconstruction. If any investors in the end are willing to stump up about 900 extra millions that is. Else its goodbye and cherry picking. 

Question is will even the name then be worth anything. I have written here as it is SAS but the name on the planes have for a time been Scandinavian.