SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) has been greatly improving their onboard experience, as they’re in the process of outfitting their longhaul fleet with a fantastic new business class product.
As it stands, SAS’ US destinations include Chicago, New York, Newark, San Francisco, and Washington. On top of that, they operate 737 service between Houston and Stavanger.
Well, it looks like SAS will even further be expanding their US route network, as they’ll be launching a couple of new routes, as follows:
Stockholm to Los Angeles as of March 2016
This new flight will launch on March 14, 2016, and operate daily with the following schedule:
SK933 Stockholm to Los Angeles departing 9:50AM arriving 12:15PM
SK934 Los Angeles to Stockholm departing 2:15PM arriving 10:00AM (+1 day)
Tickets for this new flight will go on sale tomorrow, Thursday, August 20, 2015.
Copenhagen/Oslo to Miami as of fall 2016
In addition to the new Stockholm to Los Angeles flight, SAS will also be launching flights between both Copenhagen/Oslo and Miami. Each route will be operated 3x weekly starting in the fall of 2016 (meaning the same plane will be used for both flights), as follows:
SK953 Copenhagen to Miami departing 9:30AM arriving 1:50PM [Mon, Thu, Sat]
SK954 Miami to Copenhagen departing 3:50PM arriving 7:10AM (+1 day) [Wed, Fri, Sun]
SK955 Oslo to Miami departing 9:35AM arriving 1:50PM [Tue, Fri, Sun]
SK956 Miami to Oslo departing 3:50PM arriving 7:05AM (+1 day) [Mon, Thu, Sat]
Tickets for these two flights are scheduled to go on sale this fall.
Bottom line
These are some exciting new routes, as Northern Europe doesn’t have nearly as many direct flights as much of the rest of the continent. Given SAS’ excellent new business class product, this should be a great new options for transatlantic business travelers based in California and Florida.
Now if only SAS weren’t so stingy when it comes to business class award space, which can be really tough to come by.
Do you plan on taking one of SAS’ new flights out of Los Angeles or Miami?
I was able to score 2 Business award seats using UA miles, LAX-ARN on November 14, 2016. I still can't believe my luck!
I really miss having them in Seattle. Flew them many times and always thought their service was great and friendly and then the economy tanked and they discontinued service here.
@Tom - I was able to book J seats for 2 passengers for next month IAD-CPH. I booked it in July.
Greaet product indeed and oftentimes the Optiontown upgrades are priced quite nicely, especially some routes in winter (CPH-ORD in January, anyone? :D)
Y is even not too bad, also there´s a water bottle at each seat, which is a nice touch.
@Sammy - so Tom is right, 26 hours in Miami since it arrives on Tuesday and departs on Wednesday
When will they open award space?
First time heard SAS full name.
Business class and PE looks good. I guess they got their bailout from the government and banks. Nice to see a reversal at this airline; for the last few years it was all downhill.
@Tom
It won't be parked for 26 hours. The plane is going CPH-MIA-OSL-MIA-CPH.
So it's operating SK953, parking for 2 hours, operating SK956, parking for 2.5 hours, operating SK955, parking for 2 hours, and then operating SK954 and staying for 2h20 before doing it all again.
Nice airline. And I love that you can bid on a business class upgrade through OptionTown. So, I'll definitely consider them if I ever do a revenue flight to Europe again. But, as I'm concentrating all mileage earning into Alaska Airlines these days, they're not likely an option for me for the foreseeable future.
Interesting, I am looking at a possible trip to Tromso, Norway this December in hopes of catching the Aurora for a few days and SAS may be the best option, at least from other spots in Europe. Everyone seems to be choosing Iceland, but I'm looking more into Scandinavia.
In looking at miles to get there, it seems like using Aeroplan may be the way to go (from the east coast US). Was wondering...
Interesting, I am looking at a possible trip to Tromso, Norway this December in hopes of catching the Aurora for a few days and SAS may be the best option, at least from other spots in Europe. Everyone seems to be choosing Iceland, but I'm looking more into Scandinavia.
In looking at miles to get there, it seems like using Aeroplan may be the way to go (from the east coast US). Was wondering if you or others had insight into what might be best?
I may fly premium classes into London or Frankfurt and connect to SAS from there in economy.
It's interesting that they decide to leave the aircraft parking in Miami for 26 hours instead of flying back to the hub to use on other routes.
Do they ever release J award space? Every time I've looked, I see nothing.
Competitor DU/DY Norwegian will launch a regular service to BOS, this is based on Lobster only...
Will never fly them again. If something goes wrong their ground staff will just wash their hands of you and direct you to their customer services...who you can only contact by email and have a response time of 6 weeks just to acknowledge your email. Took me 4 months to get resolution of an issue.... However good the seat is my advice ... Avoid them at all cost.
Recently flew to Europe (economy) with them. New cabin is great indeed.
Where they fell really short for me was customer service pre-check-in. I was flying with wife, 3 yrs. old and 1 lap child. I called several times in the days prior to the flight, and they (including supervisor) categorically refused to waive the fee to pre-assign seats for us. They even acknowledged that there were plenty of available seats. I offered to...
Recently flew to Europe (economy) with them. New cabin is great indeed.
Where they fell really short for me was customer service pre-check-in. I was flying with wife, 3 yrs. old and 1 lap child. I called several times in the days prior to the flight, and they (including supervisor) categorically refused to waive the fee to pre-assign seats for us. They even acknowledged that there were plenty of available seats. I offered to call 20 minutes prior to start of check-in so I would not be depriving them of potential revenues, no result.
Total lack of common sense and absurdly rigid policies. I am not expecting all airlines to be as parent-friendly as Iberia, but this was way overboard. I will make great efforts to avoid SAS in the future.
Interesting that they've chosen to compete with Norwegian head-on in these markets.