SAS tries more of the same instead of innovation

SAS new route announcements seems to be more of the same. More flights from airports in Sweden to the US. More airports around New York.

They have added flights from Gothenburg and Jylland which is ok I guess since the hop via Arlanda or Copenhagen is a bit of an iritation. Specially with the troubles due to staffing Arlanda had last summer.

They have added JFK in addition to Newark for New York. Big wup regarding destination. And more costs for SAS to a more expensive airport.

Unless they would want to become just a longhaul and swedish connections airline they should rather go for more direct connecting within Europe. SAS closed a lot of them during the pandemic and they don't seem to be coming back. There are now no diret SAS Oslo to Dublin flights. That is no direct connection between a Scandinavian capital city and another capital city in Europe. 

And there is still no direct flight whatsoever between Dublin and Trondheim. Connecting via Copenhagen or Arlanda will cost you a whole day, meaning up at 6 am to arrive at 18:00 or later. I know, have done it regularly for 30 years. Return is a litle better because Trondheim Vaernes is such an easy airport regarding security and relatively short walks. If there was a direct flight I would proabably at least treble my travelling on the route. How many possible other such routes are there. 

Connectivity in Copenhgen could also be improved. If you arrive in a gate and your departing flight is on the gate beside it you have to trek all the way to the main terminal and then out again. That can be a fight against time if there is 50 minurtes between flights and your first flight is a bit late. Once watched the head cabin crew spend the whole flight moving people to later departures. Luckily not me and I made it because of course the connecting flight was late to. 

In all additional airports for the same city is not reallyan improvement and will proably mostly just cannibalise your excisiting trafic. No wonder Ryanair have found a gap in the market and is moving heavily into the Stockholm trafic with direct routes to Europe from there after succeding from Copenhagen.

SAS better take a closer look at from what secondary airports in Scandinavia people are connecting to larger European cities and consider wether direct routes are a possibility. Specially since SAS also traffics with smaller than the common 186 or more seats planes the lower costs airlines do. A more rasonable 124 seat plane might suit regular and sustained routes from these airports better than planes with 50% more seats to fill for profitability do. Remember Ryanair started out with a fleet of 130 seat planes to build routes intially and the population of Scandinavia hasn't really grown much since then.

This of course demands that SAS again do these types of smaller planes in-house and don't outsource all the profitability of them to third parties trough wetleasing.

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