New destinations and more flights - SAS expands internationally with winter traffic program

New destinations and more flights - SAS expands internationally with winter traffic program This autumn, SAS is presenting a number of new destinations and increasing capacity on its international lines by almost 9 percent. With its new winter traffic program, SAS will embark on an expansion phase designed to capture larger shares in European and intercontinental markets. Major focus on Birmingham, UK One of the new destinations is Birmingham, the second largest city in the United Kingdom, with a catchment area of seven million people. SAS will operate three daily flights to Birmingham from Copenhagen. "Birmingham has an active business and industrial sector and stages about 700 exhibitions and trade fairs each year," says Karin Strömberg, Vice President, SAS Network Management, who continues: "For travelers from Birmingham, the city of Copenhagen is an ideally located transfer hub for eastward-bound flights." Weekend flights to Palma Palma de Mallorca is another new destination. SAS will operate flights to Palma every Saturday and Sunday from Copenhagen. "SAS has vacant capacity at weekends and Palma de Mallorca is a major market that is also a destination being demanded by our EuroBonus customers," says Karin Strömberg. Travel to Ireland is expanding and SAS is starting a new line, Oslo to Dublin, based on four flights per week. SAS is also increasing the number of flights to Switzerland. Traffic to Zurich will be increased from both Copenhagen and Stockholm. A morning flight will also be started from Stockholm to Geneva to complement the existing evening flight. Major improvements for air travelers have been quietly introduced "To create better transfer opportunities, especially in Copenhagen, we have adjusted 70 percent of our flights by 5-10 minutes. We have started to adapt our traffic system so that next year we will be able to increase the number of seats available on intercontinental and European lines. Many small changes have been made, which combined provide us with a superior timetable," says Karin Strömberg. Other traffic program innovations SAS is strengthening the development of its traffic to the United States by including a weekly evening flight from Copenhagen to New York. This will provide a total of 27 flights a week from Scandinavia to this destination. Another new feature is an evening flight from Oslo to Paris, with a return flight the following morning. Including this, SAS has a total of four daily flights on this route. The Gothenburg-Paris route is to be supplemented with a morning flight six times a week. An additional day flight will be made to Budapest and an extra morning flight will be included to Hamburg. Eastward-bound traffic will be increased by a flight to St. Petersburg from Copenhagen. The extra Tuesday flight from Copenhagen to Tel Aviv introduced in the summer will continued during the winter, a route that is also served on a daily basis. Traffic in the city triangle will be boosted by return flights between Stockholm and Copenhagen and Stockholm and Oslo. For further information, please contact: Karin Strömberg, Vice President, SAS Network Management, Tel: +46 (0)8 797 19 03 Jens Wigen, Director, SAS Network Planning, Tel: +46 (0)8 797 19 92 Please contact the SAS photo archive for all illustrations: http://www.scandinavian.net/company/newsfacts/picture/index.asp SAS CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS ------------------------------------------------------------ This information was brought to you by BIT http://www.bit.se The following files are available for download: http://www.bit.se/bitonline/2000/10/12/20001012BIT00550/bit0001.doc http://www.bit.se/bitonline/2000/10/12/20001012BIT00550/bit0002.pdf