Thanks a lot MEA380! 🙂

Fascinating! Don’t think I’ve heard of anyone having this little gem as a favourite! What is it you like best about the Yak-40?

Disgusting livery indeed… it looks like an epileptic attack, albeit very Scandinavian in design but it just looks cold, uninviting and distant. The cabin design is very nice though. The Viking longship livery is missed by many…

Originally posted by greekdude1
That picture is really old-school. Some of my cousins flew SAS back in 1988, I believe, LAX-CPH-ATH. They still had 747’s at that time. Any idea why: 1) They dumped the 747’s; 2) stopped serving LAX; and 3) stopped serving ATH for a while (I believe they have started again, unless they are still code-sharing with Maersk).

1) New business travel-oriented strategies from 1981 onwards meant that SAS started more nonstop routes from other Scandinavian cities than Copenhagen; thus there was no need for large 747s and A300s waiting to be filled with connecting passengers at CPH. Instead, the DC-9 fleet was refurbished and a few second-hand DC-10s were bought. From 1984, there were only two 747s in SAS service; N4501Q and N4502R, operating the JFK routes mainly. Both were combi versions. Last 747 service was operated on 17 May 1987, JFK-CPH.

2) LAX was cancelled in 1994 due to the small number of business travellers on the CPH-LAX route. Up to 80% of the tickets sold were Tourist Class ones, and since two aircraft were needed for this route to operate daily, it was suspended. Before the current crisis, there were talks of opening a new route to San Francisco; it might happen in the future.

3) Not sure why the ATH route was closed, probably similar to LAX with too few business travellers. Last year or so, Snowflake started flying to Athens recently, SAS re-opened the route with own aircraft flying CPH-ATH.

Didn’t know the USN DC-8 was off duty. Is it destined for scrap or just for indefinite storage, anybody know?

A Boeing 727, ’cause it doesn’t get any better than the threeholer…

The only aircraft which might be called the ‘Saab 50’ is the Safir trainer/liaison aircraft which in reality was designed Saab 91, although it in the Swedish Air Force uniform wore the name Sk50.

Neither the book SAAB aircraft since 1937 (Hans G Andersson) nor Från ASJA till SAAB – historien om en flygindustri (Gert Peterson) mention a Saab 50.

Your friend might be thinking of the Saab 90 Scandia, a failed DC-3 replacement of which only 10 were built for SAS and VASP in the 40s/50s (only one remains today, in a museum in Brasil). The last examples were built on licence by Fokker.

There were a few civilian projects by Saab which were cancelled;

– Saab 103 – projected in 1958/59, for 66 pax and freight, looked a bit like the Shorts 330.

– Project 1072 – a jet planned in 1968/69, for 48 passengers and intended as a replacement for the Convair Metropolitan. It fell through since it was too noisy for Stockholm’s Bromma airport (8 kms from the city centre).

– Project 1073 – larger than the 1072, up to 90 passengers. The Swedish Gvmt refused to agree to loans for this, and it never materialised.

– SSE SuperSonic Executive – would have been the fastest bizjet in the world, based upon the Saab Viggen layout with room for six passengers. This 1970 project would have a range of up to 4,500 kms and could fly across the USA in M 2.0.

– Project 1081 Mulan, designed together with respected Swedish aeronautical designer Rudolf Abelin, the MULA (Multi-Utility Light Aircraft) was to be marketed as a perfect aircraft for the third world, with STOL capabilities and easy maintenance.

Obviously there were other projects which never left the drawing board, but I haven’t heard of any Saab 50, nor have the Swedish books I’ve been looking in. I might be wrong, though… you never know, forgotten historical tidbits seem to pop up now and then…

Since I am involved with the airline in question, I might be able to shed some light on this…

SAS is unique in the way that it is a multi-national airline, like Gulf Air and Air Afrique. With that comes not only advantages, but also a lot of disadvantages… like having to deal with 39 different unions in three countries whenever larger decisions have to be made, and some inefficiency caused by various rules and agreements running since 1 September 1946, when SAS was formed. For example, the 3/2/2-rule, meaning that on every SAS flight the crew shall be composed of 3/7th Swedes, 2/7th Danes and 2/7th Norwegians if possible… this is the ownership proportion of SAS, and this rule also applied to aircraft ownership and registrations until a few years ago when the economical benefits of having aircraft registered in Norway became so large that the 3/2/2 fleetrule was scrapped. Taxes are lower in Norway. Just now, the 3/2/2 cabin rule is being scrapped as well, with each country manning their flights with own crews.

The plan from the management of SAS Group is to split up Scandinavian Airlines (the main carrier in the SAS Group – other airlines include Blue1, Spanair, Braathens and Snowflake) into four parts to make the airline more efficient. Already, SAS has merged with Braathens in Norway.

Scandinavian Airlines will be split up into:
SAS Sweden – B737/MD-80 European routes out of Sweden + domestic
SAS Denmark – MD-80 European routes out of Denmark + domestic
SAS Braathens – B737 European routes out of Norway + domestic

as well as an Intercontinental division, operating the A330/A340 fleet with a main base at Copenhagen.

Each division will have their own AOC and be separate companies within the SAS Group. Each division will be able to make business decisions on their own, without having to care about the other two. This means also opening new routes. Until now there have been a lot of politics involved with new routes – often a cause of frustration within, as Copenhagen tends to get all new routes since it is the main hub, albeit not the most logical one, at least not for the Asian services which all pass over Sweden…

To the customer, nothing will change. All aircraft will look the same and there will still be just one SAS to the outside world.

For the historian, however, this is a return of the original SAS… In 1946, SAS was formed to operate intercontinental flights in a partnership between SILA/ABA (Swedish Intercontinental Air Lines/Swedish Air Lines), DNL (Norwegian Air Lines) and DDL (Danish Air Lines). Each of these airlines were 50% owned by the governments and 50% by private interests. In 1948, ABA, DDL and DNL started co-operating on European routes, and formed ESAS (European SAS). The original SAS then became OSAS (Overseas SAS). ESAS and OSAS were separate entities until 1951, when the current SAS was formed by the merger of ESAS and OSAS. The ownership is still the same, with ABA/SAS Sweden, DNL/SAS Norway and DDL/SAS Denmark each owning 3/7th, 2/7th and 2/7ths respectively of the SAS Group.

So, to summarize: Scandinavian Airlines might be split into four parts to make it more efficient and able to compete on a more equal level. This is subject to agreement with the 39 unions. 37 of them have agreed… the 38th and 39th are the pilots’ and cabin attendant unions who refuse to agree with more working hours, and lower wages. More importantly, there will be no more passive flying between ARN/OSL/CPH for crews on their way to work. This also puts a stop to hotel nightstops here and there. While a source of fun for the crews, also a source of very high hotel bills for SAS, which really aren’t needed.

Tomorrow 23 March, the Board of Directors in SAS will announce how it will be. If the unions won’t agree to this last way of survival for SAS, there will be massive layoffs (talks about 10-15,000 employees), and all intercontinental services will be suspended and transferred to Lufthansa, making SAS an intra-European airline only.