As a member of the SAS Eurobonus program I got a bit of a shock when I got the news that SAS would introduce fuel surcharge when buying an award ticket. This means that I had to cough up almost 3000 kroner (about 500 USD) when getting an award ticket to Hong Kong. Lufthansa just had an offer where it was possible to buy a ticket to Hong Kong for 3500 kroner (580 USD) – this means that it is not really a point in using the frequent flyer points anymore unless you go for business or first class.

In connection with this a campaign has been started in order to try to convince SAS to go back on their decision but I have to say that I doubt they will change their mind as they are in economic problems these days. But we should still voice around opinion of course Below is an e-mail that you can send to SAS and international members should use stosn@sas.se

Dear SAS EuroBonus,

Since 2003, as EuroBonus members and loyal SAS customers, we have experienced a constant decline in the benefits and rewards of being a EuroBonus member and SAS customer. Unfortunately, we’re not the only ones who have experienced this which can be clearly seen in your market share of the Scandinavian market and also your recent traffic figures.

Fuel surcharge on EuroBonus award tickets
The latest occurrence in this steady decline is the introduction in July 2009 of adding the fuel surcharge to EuroBonus award tickets. The argument as to whether a fuel surcharge can legally be a separate charge in the first place is not of most concern to us as frequent flyers. What is of real concern is that the only remaining benefit that has made EuroBonus stand out from other frequent flyer programs – no fuel surcharge on award tickets – is now gone.

With this change, “free” EuroBonus tickets will now cost an extra 152 Euro (on average) on top of taxes, which is a 328% (on average) increase compared to just paying the taxes together with the points, and a devaluation of EuroBonus points by -34% (on average) in terms of their monetary value due to the points required remaining the same.

Also, by adding the fuel surcharge to award tickets you will be discouraging the spending of EuroBonus points on otherwise empty seats on SASSAS must pay for. Would it not be better to keep this money inside SAS by offering an incentive for your customers to spend their points with you instead of others?

EuroBonus no longer has anything that other frequent flyer programs do not also have, and worse – has many more negatives, such as:

No one-way reward flights
Other airlines offer the possibility to pay 50% of the points/miles for a one-way flight (e.g. bmi) while others take 70% of the points/miles (e.g. Lufthansa). However with SAS one must pay 100% of the points as one must book a return flight. Plus as of July 2009 one must pay the return fuel surcharge also – therefore paying twice the money just to fly one way – this is really bad practice.

25% points rule on too many booking classes
Earning 25% of points on the cheapest of the cheap tickets is understandable, but too many fare classes earn only 25% – many of these tickets are not at all cheap. Most other carriers are much more generous in awarding miles/points than SAS, and as you have made it more difficult to earn points, EuroBonus and SAS are now seen as worthless for some members in terms of rewarding loyalty.

Booking classes on Star Alliance codeshares
When booking a Star Alliance flight with SK code numbers, for example HEL-FRA-YYZ operated by LH/AC in Q class, the booking class for LH actually becomes L class, which earns 25% EB points instead of the 100% that one expected. This is misleading and should be fixed.

Poor elite recognition
As a EuroBonus Gold (EBG) there is no recognition once onboard the aircraft whatsoever. For example, other airlines block a middle seat if space is available for their Elite members (and even other partner Gold members), or provide a free snack and drink in Economy to all their Elite members on flights where there is Buy On Board (e.g. bmi).

If the experience onboard for a loyal EBG member flying short haul Economy with SAS is the same as flying Norwegian or Ryanair then there is little reason to chose SAS, and more reason to chose Norwegian or Ryanair in terms of price, and Lufthansa or Finnair in terms of better service and treatment.

This vicious circle of losing more and more market share is partly due to the gradual cutting away of the benefits and not being transparent to your best customers, to the point where we are lured away to fly with other better quality or cheaper carriers and to also use other better frequent flyer programs – thereby ignoring everything to do with SAS on the very mention of the word or view of the logo.

We understand that the current economic climate is tough and that this is the reason you introduced the fuel surcharge on award tickets, but by gradually making more and more negative changes to EuroBonus without also introducing any real improvements, particularly for your best customers (EBS and EBG members), SAS is slowly but surely losing more and more customers – more and more of your best customers who are the very ones you should be doing as much as possible to keep during these tough times.

We therefore hope that SAS will remove the fuel surcharge on award tickets as a priority, and thereafter fix the other above problem areas of EuroBonus, and by doing this, SAS will again have one of the best frequent flyer programs, that can make you win new customers and keep your old ones, making SAS once again the preferred carrier to and from Scandinavia.

Kind regards,

<Your name>
EuroBonus Member Number: EBX ### ### ### flights. They will instead be spent on seats on partner carriers which

If you have traveled a bit you know the procedure – once you get into the aircraft there is a boring safety announcement and hardly any of the passengers pays attention to it. But it is possible to do these safety announcements with a twist in order to get people to pay attention. Here are two examples.

Thomson Airways:

Southwest Airlines:

And when we are talking about airlines – have you seen this add for Air New Zealand? Well, if you haven’t check it out and take a close look at what the people are wearing…or rather not wearing They have nothing to hide.

Or maybe it should have said “SAS is still in trouble”. SAS is Scandinavia Airline System – the airline that is the “pride” of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The only problem is that they are loosing money…a lot of money. It seems like they lost about 140 million US $ in second quarter this year and today CEO Mats Jansson had to tell the press that they have to cut more jobs and save more money. Another 1500 jobs must be removed in addition to cuts that have been made already and the rest have to face a cut in salary of 10-20% – I wonder what that will lead to as SAS has a history filled with strikes as the unions are pretty strong within the company. I guess it is not news that airlines are struggling these days but it is sad to see how things are going with SAS. The problem seems to be that their expenses are so much higher than for e.g. Norwegian so they are not able to compete. So while Norwegian is doing great at the Oslo stock exchange, the SAS shares have dropped a lot over the last years. SAS have also had a lot of intercontinental routes (that they have lost a lot of money on) and they are being cut one by one. So what will happen to SAS? I think that when they get control over their costs they will be bought by e.g. Lufthansa and then Lufthansa can take care of the intercontinental flights while SAS can take care of the Scandinavian traffic and to/from Europe to Scandinavia. So maybe it is wise of me to spend the Eurobonus points now…it would be a tragedy to lose all of them if SAS goes bankrupt.

Have you ever seen a plane above you and wondered where it is coming from or where it is going to? Well, over Scandinavia you can actually get that info for quite a lot of the planes that you seen in the sky.  Check out flygradar.nu and click on the various planes to get more information about the flights. It is not really a radar as far as I understand but a radio signal (Mode-S/ADS-B-transpoder) that most modern planes have and it seems like it gives the position of the plane pretty accurate. Thanks to DinSide for reminding me again about this web site

It seems like AirAsia has plans to move into the Middle East according to this article in The Age. Until now AirAsia has been pretty successful in Asia and they have even opened a route to London. But will they be able to move into a territory where Emirates Airlines and Ethiad have all their focus? Many of the major, traditional airlines (SAS, BA etc) seems to be struggling these days and it is weird to see how many of the low budget airlines (Norwegian, Ryanair etc) are getting by without any problems. So you never know….all of a sudden we will see AirAsia planes flying all over Europe

I use flightstats to check out different info regarding flights that I have been on (great to use in connection with FlightMemory). Here you can find out how long your flight really was, what plane was used etc etc.

This is a trip report from a trip to Dubai with Lufthansa. We bought these tickets when we came across a great Lufthansa offer a few months back and the price was just to good to turn down. We got the tickets for 2800 kroner (about 420 USD) per person for a round trip from Stavanger in Norway and that is almost half the price of what you normally see. We did go to Dubai in 2002 and you can read that trip report here. I’m also planning on making a new proper trip report…this trip report will focus on the flight to and from Dubai.
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This is a trip report from when I went from Stavanger in Norway to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. I used SAS and I went via Copenhagen and Bangkok on my way to KL. I used my Eurobonus frequent flyer points to upgrade to business class and that it always a treat Normally I travel with a colleague but this time I traveled alone.
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In February 2009 I went to Kuala Lumpur for work and I used SAS to get there. On the way to Kuala Lumpur (or KL as it is also known)  I was able to upgrade to business by using my SAS Eurobonus points but on the way home the flight was completely full and I had to stick to economy class. Even if I am a SAS Eurobonus gold card member this was actually my very first trip with SAS in economy class on a long haul trip. Here are some of my thoughts as I was going home…
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I like to get an idea of where I will be seated before I travel – maybe you have been assigned to a seat that is not ideal and maybe you can change it to a seat with better legroom. There is of course a website for this kind of information and it is called SeatGuru . On this website you can check out how the various planes for the various airlines are configured, which seats that are good or bad and get lots of useful information. There are also other websites with similar information and one of them is SeatExpert. Good luck with grabbing that perfect seat on your next flight