How are the vibes at SAS nowadays?

[KADS]

After the continous stream of pathetic journalism being fed to the public lately ("incident" after "incident") and with the reported profit drop (one of the steepest drops in europe according to Flight Intl.) in addition to the 'Maersk affair' and the "Braathens' slip", I'm just curious of the average attitude and the vibes amongst the employees at SAS nowadays. Is the 50 in 5 still valid? Taking into account the current slowdown in global economy, is there anything that indicates that SAS is getting onto thin ice? What's the word on the flightdecks???

[PropsAreForBoats]

I for one am very disappointed in the way all the issues you have mentioned have been handled in relation to the media. I saw the press conference in Sweden regarding the Maersk case with J. Lindegaard and H. Norvik, and their performance was embarrasing, to say the least. In this case, as with the "incident-hysteria" this summer, SAS should have gone out much earlier with thorough and correct information to the media. It is incredible that SAS has allowed a series of more or less undramatic incidents to became a media feast of speculation and drama. This is most disheartening among those of us who consider safety as our prime objective and concern.
Concerning the Braathens case, I am worried for fellow pilots over there, as I now think they face an uncertain future. From a SAS pilots point of view however, i think it is for the better.

[KADS]

Somehow I feel that the power and impact of media is underestimated by the airlines. My opinion is that not only is it necessary to have a "spokesperson" to be in contact with the media, should anything occur that necessitates an official word, but there should be a broader role for this person or persons. There should be an office that positively and "profesionelly" deals with the press, not only at the occasions of incidents but as an ongoing relationship. Almost like a PR machine, constantely there to smooth out the medias skew picture and to make 'proper', media friendly statements. Even though I resent journalists, it is going to be difficult to get rid of their reporting which just gets worse and worse. So if you can't fight them, work with them. Remember the unfortunate trust the public places with them. This is the trust the airlines need. Every pilot who has ever read an aviation related article knows that at least 50% is poorly reported or just not true. So if this is the "truth" the public believes than something needs to be done....

[Payscale]

Cartel or not. Who decides if a cooperation between airline ( or bakeries for that matter) is a cartel or just commom business practise?
If I go down to my fitness center, they advertice that I may workout in 400 studios all over the world. Is that acartel or just common sense. The later I would say!
In scandinavia, or atleast denmark, we love to bash SAS. Maybe because the common feeling is that it is more swedish than danish. This whole story is going to damage SAS' image in the general public. And we are not to popular in the first place. Need I mention danish domestic versus Q400.

The big question is will the board of director have to go?

[TripleTAY]

Propsar......... are correct about media in general. It is to much. All most incidents are called emergencies etc. It is totally unacceptable. I do not think there is any other business there are that often being written or spoken that wrong about. In Berlingske Tidende - a Norwegian owned newspaper, written in Danish by Danes - they show a picture of a "daily thing going on in Denmark". Once there were a picture of a Fokker 100 (or 70?) from Austrian being deiced in CPH - they wrote: And here is a plane, just landed from Australia being cleaned after a long flight.

[PropsAreForBoats]

Journalists are the lowest lifeforms on this planet - next to taxi-drivers :D

[Nick Figaretto]

WOW, PAFB!

Be a little bit careful! Keep in mind that most taxi drivers in Oslo have their CPL licences with ATPL theory. :D

Nick.

[Vmu]

Nick; Swingstang kjørte taxi. Han har hverken CPL eller ATPL :D

[Payscale]

hvornår udkommer den nye lønoversigt..? :D

[Fwd Wonder Cerebrum]

Getting onto thin ice...?

Most unlikely. I think Nick has a good point. When it comes to props, boats and all that stuff; I'd like to point out that thin ice is for fans (remember?), fans are for heroes, and, correct me if I'm wrong here, but Vmu is a good guy, member of boot boyz, and he has a PROPagation velocity known as beeing in the upper part of the scale, right?

[Nick Figaretto]

And your point is...?

[Fwd Wonder Cerebrum]

My point is; Thou shalt act in prudence! When I read PAFBs attitude concerning journalists, my mind was carried back in time to the rememberable periodical CallOut!, and, as i recollect, it had quite a few good men engaged as journalists. ;)

[PropsAreForBoats]

Then I shall adjust for your convenience: My previous statement had professional journalists in mind :p

[Slow Cruiser]

:p :p :p

[Mr moto]

But before you get carried away slagging off the journo's-

Are you suggesting that ALL airlines are suffering a similar number of incidents as a matter of course?

A number of these incidents involve the Queasy, are you going to argue that its a great, trustworthy, reliable, profitable aircraft?

I've only read properly, a couple of the articles but found them to be essentially accurate. That is to say, all the hype in their vocabulary couldn't get past the fact that something quite exciting but basically not dangerous was handled in a professional manner by the crew.

[PropsAreForBoats]

From todays "Dagbladet", a norwegian paper:

"In July this year SAS had 30000 flights. SAS' own requirement is that the number of technical incidents should be less than 1 per 1000 flights. In July there were 10 tech. incidents. This gives less than 1 incident per 3000 flights. During the first seven months of this year the number of tech. faults that must be reported decreased by 20 percent, compared to the same period of time last year."

Finally a balanced article about the hysteria this summer, my credit to the journalist.
Mr. mofo, the point is that SAS did not experience an extraordinary number of incidents this summer. But the media-hype made it look like the company was falling apart, and that safety in SAS was compromised. Now for those of us who have safety within SAS as our prime task, it was immensely frustrating to watch from the sideline, as things went out of control in the media, and SAS made such a terrible job of handling it; allowing the hysteria to escalate.

[PropsAreForBoats]

As for the Q400, everybody agrees that its introduction has been a painful one, riddled with technical faults. There is no doubt that Bombardier delivered SC a product which was not ready for commercial use, and which still has its problems. Because of this experience, SAS will never again be the launch-customer of a new model. And when the Q someday is cured from all its ailments, it will still be discussed whether it is the right aircraft or not. (I think my position on this is pretty self-evident ;) )

[Fwd Wonder Cerebrum]

The introduction has indeed been a painful one, but has it ever been an issue whether SC was ready for the Q? It will be of great interest to follow the Qs upcoming introduction at WIF... guess they've had only minor problems with their Bombs through the last decade. But I guess the SAS/SC regime knows better than the rest of the aviation industry as always.

Just to illustrate further: It's not the first time SAS operates Airbus (remember the 320's specifically designed without centertanks?)

-Always treat your aeroplane like you treat your woman; avoid the SC treatment... :p

[ 10 September 2001: Message edited by: Fwd Wonder Cerebrum ]

[ 10 September 2001: Message edited by: Fwd Wonder Cerebrum ]

[Ace MCcoy]

Fwd wonder cerebrum,

Lets get some facts straight, shall we;

1) There´s a h**l of a diff. between the Bombs that WF have been operating for the last many years, and then the -400. They might just find out the hard way, or they´ll be smart and ask for some info. from SC about experiences. Have you got inside info from SC, that leads you to speculate that SC was not ready. My 2 cents worth: the -400 was not ready for anything, when it left Toronto.

2) SAS operated A300, not 320´s in the eighties. Range was limited w/out the centertanks, but they were not intended for longhaul anyway.

But hey, SAS has scre**d up enough times already when buying good airplanes, and then fiddling with them. MD90 w/out front stairs springs to mind. And there are more..

[OffCourse]

Gee Fu@ckin Wizz, Wonderboy.

What exactly are you trying to say?

-Always treat your aeroplane like you treat your woman; avoid the SC treatment...

Are you trying to start a pissing contest here? Well, WIF haven't exactly treated all their Twin Otters that nicely either. If you catch my drift.

You don't know jack sh!t about the readiness of the SC technical department. And the fact that "half" the technical department of Bomardier have been in CPH, working on the SC Q400s for the last year or so, speaks for itself.

And wat's tat Airbus comparison? Have you heared anything of SAS having problems with the introduction of the A330/340s?

Your comments and underlying conclusions stink.

Hopefully the introduction of the "Q" in WIF will be smoother than what the guys in SC experienced. But you should keep in mind that this will be due to the experiences gained through the Launch Customer: SAS Commuter.

The SC guys are probably more than happy to discuss the introduction of the Q with you, and there are probably lots of things that SC could have been more focused on, both technically and operationally (the tailstrike experiences is one example).

But your post shows that you are not interested in dialogue. Your primary goal is SAS bashing.

SC Q400 guys: Boycot this idiot.

OffCourse.

[ 10 September 2001: Message edited by: OffCourse ]

[PsychoDad]

FWD Wonder Coward,

What is it whith some of you norwegians ? Is it the recent royal wedding or the daily slaughter of whales thats gone to your head ? Have you been on an oil rig sniffing fumes or what ? Listen here, there is but one golden rule when venturing on a SAS Bashing streak and that is to get the facts straight and not throw BS in the air for the pure hell of it. Your credibility suffers immensely and you will forever be known as the norwegian idiot who doens't know his ar*e from elbow.

Now, I am not a SAS employee myself and thus enjoy a good SAS bashing as much as the next person. But only as long as the facts are right. As Ace tells us, SAS has indeed made some very peculiar choices over the years when buying new hardware; the MD90 without fwd airstair being a prime example. Personally I belive that SAS missed the train when they selected the Q400 over a regional jet. However, I am also fairly certain that some very experienced guys and girls in SC have been using the big calculator, and am also certain that on paper the Q400 beats any regional jet on the market when counting fuel use. But paper can not always tell you everything, and for marketing purposes and passenger appeal a regional jet beats any prop.

But, and this is a fact, SAS does indeed have one of the most, ehh, "diverse" fleets in the industry. And everyone is entitled to his or her own thoughts about that, however in the end it's somebody up in Stockholm making those decisions, not you or me. Personally I think SAS should have gone the Airbus way instead of mixing DC9s with MD80s with MD90s with 737NGs with A321s, but hey who am I to know what's best for SAS. Alternatively they could have gone for some more MD90s (B717-200 ?) and the smaller MD95 (B717-100 ?) but I am confident that the Boring boys gave SAS an offer on the piglet they just couldn't refuse.

So there !

And for SAS handling the press recently, well I don't know how the media has been treating SAS around Scandinavia, but in Denmark they have been on their necks since the Maersk / SAS scandal. The handling of that scandal by SAS was a master piece of how not to do such things, and sent SAS's credibility into a flat spin along with the shareprices. Add a few technical problems, which incidentially came at the same time and quite often too, and you've got one hell of a story to tell the punters.

As anyone living in Denmark will testify, Maersk Air handled themselves much better by the immediate acceptance of responsibility by the then CEO and his just as immediate resignation. SAS initially had no blame to assign, the tried to rub it off on lower level employess and only after immense political and media pressure did a vice-CEO resign (only to become head of Austrian by the way ... entreprenurial bunch them top executives)

As a frequent flyer with SAS I received a letter from your present CEO explaining the SAS version of the story. Some things in the letter made sense, but rather typically for SAS in the cartel scandal, the letter did not address that affair directly, merely hinted that SAS has received very poor press recently.

PS
Norwegians in general are a nice bunch, particularly the sheilas :D

PPS
If I taxied the King Air into something a bit more solid than aluminium, what are the chances that putting the blame on, say ATC, would land me a B777 LH job with Delta ?

[ 11 September 2001: Message edited by: PsychoDad ]

[Fwd Wonder Cerebrum]

Ok, guess I erroneously stepped on a few toes in my contribution. Just to get it right: I did not post it to bash SAS/SC, or any of their fine aviators (and please don't blame them for the tailstrikes, there are some basic differences between the F50 and the Q, and we're all only humans, right?)

I raised the question whether it has been an issue whether SC was ready for the Q, and obviously it has been an issue. I wish WIF good luck with their biggest Q and have no further questions.

When it comes to my indelicate last remark, I'm pretty sure no SC pilot took this personally.

PS, Ace; you’re quite right about the Airbus w/o centertanks, they were 300s indeed. (But hard to sell after they were found to be inconvenient to SAS)

And Psycho: Don’t blame my fellow countrymen for my somewhat unpropitious comments.
:)

[Ace MCcoy]

Fwd cerebrum,
I raised the question whether it has been an issue whether SC was ready for the Q, and obviously it has been an issue

Why do you now know, that it has been an issue, whether SC was ready for the -400, and not vice versa?? You didn´t answer my question as to whether you have info. to back up your speculation.
As someone said, "half" of Bombardier´s technical dept. have more or less been based at the SC hangar, to try to sort out the numerous faults. Now that I think, explains to you where the problem has been.

But I agree with..(dam*, forgot who), that SAS should have went with a regional jet in the first place. Pax want the jet. That easy really.

The A300´s, well you´re correct, were not easy to sell, but Premiair took them, and are (still) quite happy with them as far as I know.

Now, I´m not a SC man, but having many friends there, who have told me lots of stories about faults on the -400, you can bet your sweet as* that it was/is a flawed airplane, not a flawed organisation at SC. Sure, fingertrouble happens there too, as it happens in all airlines that get new airplanes.
And mind you, for all practical purposes, the Dash8-400 is a new airplane, not just a longer Dash1/2/300!

edited for spalling miss. takes

[ 11 September 2001: Message edited by: Ace MCcoy ]

[Fwd Wonder Cerebrum]

You're correct again; the Dash8-400 is a new airplane, but there's also the Q300, hence I wish WIF good luck with their large Q since they already have a smaller version.

[Mr moto]

PAFB. OK, that's much better. As I mentioned earlier I pay precious little attention to what the papers say.

Back into the fray!

But none of the other Q-400 customers have had anything like the problems SC has had, have they?
They must have bought the factory standard.

[Nick Figaretto]

From what I've heard, the Q300 is not at all copmparable with the Q400. The Q400 is a totally new airplane. The Q300 is merely a "regular" Dash8-300 fitted with the new ANVS system.

The engines are totally new, the electrical and hydraulic systems are all different, etc. etc. Only a small percentage (10-20%) of the technical parts on a Q400 can be used on an "old" Dash-8.

The reason why SC had such problems with it's first ten or so new Q400, was that, apart from the proto-types, these were the first ten A/Cs to leave the plant in Canada.

The individuals have become successively better and better. The improvements have been made mainly due to the experiences from the first inividuals delivered to SC.

One of the reasons why SC stopped the deliveries from Bombardier a while ago, was that while the aircraft that were already delivered were modified in CPH, new airplanes kept coming from Canada without these modifications. This was intolerable for SC. The deliveries were stopped until all aircraft were upgraded (the so called V600 upgrade) and a certain technical regularity was achieved. (92%, if I remember correctly) This technical irregualrity figure even included two extra Q400s on loan from Bombardier, that was on standby in CPH.

When al these modifications were done - both on the individuals delivered and the ones not yet delivered, the delivery resumed.

I believe all other Q400 operators got their Qs with the V600 modification done at Bombardier.

Just one small example of the problems is that the Q400 is wired so tight, that the electrical cables vibrates out of the sockets in the electrical plugs, because there is no slack to absorb these vibrations. This have caused a large number of electrical faults. The solution to this problem would be to re-wire the whole aircraft... The SC technicians have had to deal with dozens of similar construction errors.

I am not saying that previous experience on Dash-8 (as WIF technicians have) wouldn't have made it easier for the technical department in SC. But it is definitely not the reason why SC have had such problems with the introduction of the Q400.

If that is what "the word" says in WIF, I can tell you that "the word" is wrong this time.

Nick.

[Payscale]

The reason why SC didn't opt for a regional jet was thar there wasn't any around with 70 seats. Furthermore, at the time "intentiosaftalen" did not cater for Jets.

The DHC-8-400Q is not a totally new aircraft. Many af the systems were also on the Dash-7. A totally new aircraft would take longer time and could not carry the same name as a "totally" different type ie DHC-8-300.

Someone told me the other day that the dash is like an Alfa Romeo...nice today...crap tommorrow ( or the day after) :D

Even SAS guyes like company bashing...when warranted though, and not just out of frustration. We do it all the time at the bitching table in the crew room!

Now we are supposed to fly with cockpit door closed...great thinking!...is that because terrorists live in caves, and don't know how to open doors??!!
With the door open MAYBE we can see something is wrong and send off a mayday, before they reach the cockpit.

Penny for your thoughts....

[Nick Figaretto]

Let's start a new topic on that... :)

[Stein Meum]

Sure SAS has screwed up specifications on their planes over the years,but the MD-90 isn't one of those.

When the last recession set in around -90/-91,SAS had 18 outstanding orders for the MD-80 series.As they were not now required anymore,the decision was taken to cancel the order.Now,the cancellation fee was of such a magnitude that SAS instead ordered as many MD-90's they could,so as to spare the much needed cash for future needs.
These planes were NOT intended for SAS use ("they'll never see the inside of a SAS hangar!"),but intended for leasing out as and when they were completed.For this purpose,the McD base standard was ordered,not the SAS one which would incorporate the fwd. airstairs.
When the planes were finished,they could not be leased out,and as SAS was expanding rapidly at this time,chose to take the planes themselves,and some old SR MD-81's,as well.
The rest is history,as they say.

[Ace MCcoy]

Well, mad dog 80
There are different versions of the same story abound then.
Another one is, that SAS was in fact mighty close to going broke back then. The order for a bunch of MD80´s had been placed but the world economy went bust and SAS simply couldn´t find the money to pay McD for the 80´s. A smart move it was, to switch some 80 orders to the (not yet built)MD90. That way, SAS wouldn´t have to come up with money, and wouldn´t have to take on aircraft that were not needed at the time. (Things thankfully changed).
The MD90 was after consideration ordered w/out the fwd. stair, since it would save 600 kgs. and an enourmous amount of fuel over the lifetime of each aircraft. And the MD90 were only supposed to frequent the big airports, where gates would always be available.....well.....not.
Turned out the MD90 got too heavy in the back w/out the fwd. airstair, and they´re now flying around with 600 kgs. of ballast in the fwd. cargo compt.
(Incidentally, SAS bought airstairs to be fitted on the MD90 later on, but now a bunch of electronics had been put where the airstair was to go, and they gave up on the idea.
Some of the MD90 airstairs, are now flying around on MD80´s, where they fit very nicely.

Now, thats the story as far as I know. But if yours is the correct one, I bow and apologise.

Either way, MD90 is a great aircraft, and I never intended to ridicule buying it. But the airstair would have been nice in FRA :D :D