A lot is changing at Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) right now. The airline has emerged from bankruptcy protection, has a new investment from Air France-KLM, and has left Star Alliance and joined SkyTeam. The airline has now announced its newest long haul route, and it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.
Continue reading: Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) Adds Seoul Incheon Flights
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
@Ben - do you think this will actually be launched in September if they still cannot overfly Russia at the time?
there are many flights from western Europe to NE Asia that operate now with the Russia airspace restrictions in place; it simply adds flying time but a hub to hub route is the best way to maximize revenue and offset the higher costs.
KE will probably start discussions about JVs on some of these new routes to ICN - with VS to LHR and SK to CPH - as soon as the merger is fully approved and the timeline and details for phasing out OZ are finalized.
SAS never flew a number of intercontinental routes from Oslo, just New York (still operated) and for a short periode Miami. Stockholm had more intercontinental flights
"The carrier’s network to Asia used to be bigger, but of course not being able to use Russian airspace has been a major challenge for the carrier...."
This route information is at odds with the diagramatic route shown elsewhere in this post. So, what is it; flight largely over Russia, or skirting around the evil empire?
That's not an actual route map though, is it? Just the most direct route between the two airports overplayed on a map.
While Seoul serves as an important TPAC hub, it could not serve as a hub for Asia-Europe routes due to its location. Only passengers to/from secondary cities in Japan and maybe Philippines would choose ICN over other NE Asia hubs like PVG/HKG.
Except there are no direct flights from Copenhagen to Hong Kong or Shanghai. One stop connection via ICN or a two stop via Hong Kong or Shanghai?
Singapore or Bangkok on SQ or TG are other options one stop. Or the ME3
Isn't everything going to be two stop anyways? European feed into CPH into ICN into final Asia destination vice versa.
in other aviation news, hopefully Ben can do a story or two about the dual ground collisions involving 4 aircraft and 4 airlines at BOS yesterday.
From Wikipedia: East Asia is a geographical and cultural region of Asia including China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan
As an ICN-based pax who just started SAS's Million Mile challenge, I couldn't be more excited for this announcement.