Given the northern latitude, should SAS consider transforming ARN into Asian hub and compete with Finnair’s HEL base?
SAS have for many years located a majority of the long haul flights to Copenhagen (probably due to politics) and have focused more on transatlantic flights. They have more destinations in the US than Finnair does.
And frankly, I think that trying to establish a lot of new destinations in competition with Finnair, Norgwegian and the other partners in Star Alliance will end with failure.
The Scandinavian/Nordic market is quite small, we are approx 26 million people living in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland, around 1/3 of the population in Germany for example. It will be hard to establish profitable routes to a region with fierce competition from many other airlines.
That said, it would have been smarter of SAS to focus the Asian routes to ARN instead of CPN, but I guess that Danish politicians are better negotiators than their Swedish and Norwegian counterparts.
This is how I see SK can augment flights from ARN to:
Asia
SIN: Singapore
BKK: Bangkok
HKG: Hong Kong
TPE: Taipei
PVG: Shanghai
PEK: Beijing
ICN: Seoul
NRT: Tokyo
Select North American routes
EWR: New York
IAD: Washington
ORD: Chicago
CPH should remain North American heavy routes namely:
LAX: Los Angeles
SFO: San Francisco
SEA: Seattle
ORD: Chiago
EWR: Newark
IAD: Washington
MIA: Miami
ATL: Atlanta
IAH: Houston
OSL can capitalise “thinner” Canadian/American routes (depending on demand A320N or A321LR can be use of these routes)
YYZ: Toronto: A321N
YUL: Montreal: A321N
YOW: Ottawa: A320N
BOS: Boston: A321
DTW: Detroit: A320N
PHL: Philadelphia: A321
BWI: Baltimore: A320N
SAS has just made announcement of A321LR joining its rank. Which North American destinations do you think SK can utilise the A321LR?