Does this mean all the hiering is done seperatly as well?


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The SAS Group will be divided up into 11 separate airlines, in order to get a better overview over the individual companies.

This is confirmed by SAS Information Director Hans Ollogren, according to boarding.no.

Today, the SAS concern consists of five airlines: Scandinavian Airlines, Braathens, Wideroes, Blue 1 and Spanair.

Within a short time the number will be increased to 11, boarding.no writes.

The reorganization to more and smaller units with their own accounts, is a central element in the SAS cost cutting plan "Turnaround 2005", with the aim to reduce costs by NOK 14 billion by the year 2005.

-To today's five airlines under the SAS umbrella will be added Air Baltic and Estonian Air. In addition, presentday SAS will be divided up into three national airlines for each of the three Nordic countries, plus an intercontinental operator. Finally, we add Snowflake, which makes altogether 11 airlines, says Ollogren.

(NRK)

Rolleiv Solholm

Well, if you'd like to get hired by "SAS" of the future, Baltic, Estonian or Blue1 will be the ticket. Braathens and Widerøe are pretty much at a standstill with regards to hiring, while our local psycopath Mr. Lindegård is busy slaughtering Scandinavian Airlines as we know it.

Before long a ticket with SAS on it will only mean Scandinavian Airlines if you fly longhaul out of Copenhagen, otherwise it will mean any cheap labour Lindegård and his esteemed colleagues can get his hands on.
Welcome to the future of scandinavian aviation!

I strongly agree you, pharmair.
Definately after Estonia becomes a full member of EU, Estonian Air will be competing the other SAS-group/umbrella/whatever companies with lower costs. That might lead to new collective agreenments and salaries at Blue1 as well as in every company with SAS. !!!! seems to be happening again in aviation and poor pilot dudes are screwed again.

Strange. No mention of Commuter.

Incidentally, whilst I don't want to comment on the politics too much, I feel it's the unions which have slaughtered SAS.

Thus, getting smaller parts of the same group to make a profit from routes which the main carrier in the group loses money on is what Basil Fawlty would term 'bleedin' obvious'!

Let me start by stating that I DON'T LIKE WHATS GOING ON AT SAS NOW. I would prefer to take it back to the eighties with monopoly, lighter workload and those wonderful DC8/9/10s. No kiddin'.

But!

Those are not the days anymore.

Lets face it, SAS is under fire every day from more and more costcutting carriers, be that from within SAS or not. SAS is not guaranteed survival anymore. If EasyRyan should choose to expand even further in Sandinavia, even hire a smaller airline to fly the thinner routes, guess what will happen: The airline with the cheapest tickets will survive. If SAS dosn't reduce its costbase, I just don't see where SAS will fit in in a future scandinavian routenetwork, except for doing a few feeding flts to/from cph/arn/osl. That is the effect of open skies.
So, "if you cant beat them, join them". Not an interesting solution, I agree, but what else to do? That means cost-cutting whereever possible. Why not have the cheapest carrier within SAS operate a flight? Come on, so far we have only seen Blue1 to/from Finland, some time in the near future, the may start flights from Denmark/Sweden to mainland Europe. What will the unions do? Go on strike (again like the good old days)? Or face the music and agree to work at the same level as the LoCos?

Speaking of starting a strike, I'll just throw a few thoughts of my own in here:
The "weapon" of striking ought to be used in case ofworking in an environment not suitable for working (dangerous) or fundamentally wrong working conditions. A strike is justified when, e.g. pilots claim that flying 14 hrs without breaks are unsafe. Its not justified when empolyees claim that its unfair that a cheaper airline fly on routes that the strikers used to fly themselves (again, this cloud be done in the eighties).

Sorry, back to SAS.
Many employees keep blaming Lindegaard of whats happening with SAS today, the laying offs, the working harder and the everclosing competitors. WAKE UP !!!! SAS had it coming, Lindegaard or not, he's just another CEO trying to pick up the pieces. Ask yourself this: "What could I have done differently, if I had been in his shoes?" A lot come to my mind, but my (crazy) plans require a sh!tload of money, money that SAS dosn't have for the time being. Outlawing LoCos. Reinstating monopoly. Bringing back the DC8 (allright, mabye not a vsensible solution).
Its fairly somple: SAS need to make money to survive (and expand when time comes). To do that, they need to cut costs.

I agree, strange no one mentioned commuter

Hardhat/flakjacket on, tug in, and wait for the flaming. /FS

First of all: the reason SC is not mentioned is becaused they are considered to be a part of SA (Scandinavian Airlines).

All of the pilots with SA agree that serious costcutting had to be done for SAS to survive, as a matter of fact we were the first employee group to completely meet or exceed the managements demands.
Even Mr. Lindegaard has stated that we are very competitive with other european airline pilots. Nobody has complained about the longer days, even our old collective agreement allowed for 700+ hours of flying pr. year, the problem has always been that SA due to an idiotic fleet mix and a useless scheduling department has been unable to get enough hours out of the pilots.

The biggest problems with SA has been a huge overhead + Europes most expensive cabin crew. Strangely enough these problems seem to be the hardest to fix, and in the mean time Lindegaard and his friends are handing out our routes to our biggest competitors, namely our so-called sister companies.
This outsourcing has so far led to massive lay-offs of the most devoted groups of employees within the company: the mechanics and the pilots.

The biggest reason for the break-up of SA into five smaller parts, is that Lindegaard now will have 11 similar-size small airlines to continue his divide-and-conquer games with. The end result will be a big group of unhappy employees, always looking for a better job; but I'm sure the stock-owners and management will be happy...

As a matter of fact it sounds a lot like an airline I knew about in Florida, Valujet. We all know how well that went...

About those so called sister companies...

I used to work at one of them. At once, when the SAS took the company over, we as a pilots contacted to SAS Pilot Union to create a good relation and to help each other in that difficult situation. We then knew that this time will come and we needed the bigger union to help us in negotiation of a new collective agreement. You guys, sorry to say, You let us down. No aswers to the phone calls, emails nothing. You were so big and proud.
So alone we did the best we could.

I have left that SAS-Group behind long ago but I still wonder what if. Maybe the co-operation wouldn´t made a difference. Maybe it would. We do not know now and that makes me feel sorry. Period.

All the best to you guys in Lindegaards troops, all sides, may the force be with you.

Fadec Off, I mostly agree with your last post. As a matter of fact I think NSF was relatively open to an integration/co-operation, but I believe our friends further south were less keen on another LIN fiasco....Like you said; can't look back at past stupidities, gotta look forward and make the best of todays situation...

Sounds like you made a good call back when you left, hope you're happy in your current position. There's definitely more guys, especially within SA, that are looking for greener pastures these days...

To a couple of the other guys on this thread; I reserve my right to fight for a position that gives me an income to support my family. If we were to follow FU's advice, I might as well apply for a burger-flipping job with McD's, since that pays better than a F/O job with AirBotnia/Blue1.

RTO, you´re wrong and that´s the really big stink in Scandiland right now. Pilots with many years seniority are being axed and have no rights whatsoever with the other SAS carriers. They have to apply, pass the interview and start from scratch just like any outsider would. Seniority is gone, pension is gone, moral is gone. This of course is great for the B1 guys, they´re moving up and ahead like there´s no tomorrow. Thing is, sooner or later B1 will be getting too big, and then the lay offs will start there and off it is to Estonian or whoever will be in vogue.
Yes, the unions are very much to blame. They lived like fat cats for many years and were criminally naive in not seing this coming, despite being warned.
But you can´t run a company this way long term.
JL looks good at the moment.
So did Lorenzo once.
I think SAS´s days are numbered.

Before anybody get it wrong I would like to underline something.

I was not blame anybody, just to mention how difficult times we live now and did in near past. It is also difficult for those guys in "sister companies". Not easy to live knowing how things are, but they did not choose that either.

Flathatter, I agree. Harder times ahead- no doubt.

pharmair, Your last sentence got it. We all should fight, the whole industry is changing and lot of things will hurt us as pilots in the future.

I'm well and secured now but who knows what tomorrow will bring. Thanks for asking Pharm. It ain't greener here but life is better at the moment. Really from the bottom of my heart my symphaties are always with fellow aviators, especially with those about to loose their jobs.

Hallo,

IF Mr. JL pulls off his little plan the future will look alot better for SAS. The problem is that the current costbase is much too high and the current company structure is not suited to todays environment. If he manages to lower the costs associated with producing ASK the company will look like a mean, lean fighting machine. And that will spell trouble for all other airlines in scandinavia.

Rgds,

RTO
First rights for an interview. Big f...... deal. Even if they get hired they start out back at the bottom. There are guys that started out at WF, got hired at SK, got fired again, got hired back at WF on the bottom of the list and are now facing another possible lay off there.
JL loves this. He´s getting highly qualified labor at rock bottom prices, over and over again.

Ramrise, you really think JL´s plan will make things better? Cutting costs is necessary, especially at a lard laden company like SAS. And a lot of unions will need to face the music. But scre.... over your employees like this might work for the bottom line in the short term, but will wreck any company in the long run.

I think the problem in general in scandiland is that wages are higher than in the country's south of Denmark. this means that on an international scale SAS cant be competetive with other airlines unles they adjust the salary to a more international level.

This is in all industrys not just airlines, but since the intro of low cost company's puts an even bigger than normal pressure on our industry

I have a feeling that wages are not higher in the north. At least if compared to UK and Germany. Reasons for their uncompetivines must be somewhat deeper.
Blues

This thread is very interesting to read. It really shows how Scandinavians are really at their best. So emotional, without bashing, name calling or being childish. The best reading on PPRuNe for a while.

Keep it up this way, PLEASE!!!

SAS has a 47% stake in airBaltic. The Latvian government has the rest, except for a tiny portion which belongs to the now defunct Baltic International Airlines. On the whole, the Latvian government owns the majority, but if you fly the airline, it is well advertised that airBaltic is "well connected with SAS."

Basically, airBaltic follow the SAS program. Service is fair, but the food is getting worse rapidly, just like SAS. airBaltic just took their first delivery of a 1991 model B737-500 which it will use on the Riga-Copenhagen run, freeing up some of their three RJ70s to do new runs into Amsterdam and Brussels.

Despite having to fly sophisticated equipment, the airBaltic pilots are being paid much less than an SAS F/O on his first flight. Maybe SAS is looking toward expanding airBaltic and Estonian Air for other purposes than just flying point to point. What if the route included Riga-Copenhagen-Oslo. You pay a pittance more for the Copenhagen-Oslo flight, but you are guaranteed seats because it is cheaper than the SAS domestic flight. They could also pick up passengers in Copenhagen (I hear grumbling).

I'm flying from Riga to Oslo next week for only two days. airBaltic-SAS charged me USD 1,200 because I would not be staying a Saturday night. I checked with Finnair who charged me USD 460 for the same ticket with better connections and they didn't care if I stayed a Saturday night. Take a guess which one I took.

On the other hand, airBaltic is making strides in the cheap ticket market, but you have to be like a rat terrier to get their EUR 87 special one way to Amsterdam. I don't know their general policy, but there are probably only four seats at that price.

interesting that only a small mention is made of the spanair purchase. under the SAS umbrella scheme it seems layoff´s are soon to come to them as well, no ?

ADFS.
My toughts exactly. No mention about Spanish colleagues.
If I remember correctly they are making good result and being cost efficient and located far away from hotspot so I guess their being excluded about the discussion is "justified".
I was also once part of the one daughter company and this issue intricues me very much.
Everybody knows that even big costcutting programs all majors are somewhat in trouble. And that is because of times. Not country of origin or terrorism or LoCos...
All combined together makes this day in aviation quite dramatic.
SAS is quite unique airline because tree major hubs and countries. So it feels that the troubles come 3 times 3.
JL is just an manager who tries to make it working again. (that doese't change the thing that I disliked him when I was working in the company (Company meaning all the branches) .
The body of SAS in whole is way too heavy. I knew couple guys working in motherairline and sad to say that all benefits and workinghours vere too good to be true.
And that is happened.
These things are changin. Unions made too good effort to keep all that and now everybody realises that is is mission impossible.

So in my opinion that is why there are coming an Airline with 11 branches.
And it is !!!! to give seniority and everything elese away, but as we know we still have to eat.
Lets live and cope.

And the pastures are nice inthe other side fence also.

Tailwinds to everybody.

Techman
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