Skift Take
To the average flyer this makes little sense. Why would a Scandinavian airline build a new airline with the same name in Ireland? But many consumers expect to pay 30 or 35 Euros to fly from Copenhagen to London. If an airline is going to offer those prices, it needs to control costs.
Scandinavian airline SAS is creating an Irish subsidiary — also called SAS — to fly some shorter routes because that's the only way it can compete on costs with discounters like Norwegian Air, Ryanair and EasyJet on certain competitive routes, its CEO told Skift in a recent interview.
The airline's foreign competitors obviously do not use a Scandinavian operating certificate on short international flights that touch SAS's hubs in Stockholm, Oslo and Copenhagen, giving them a labor cost advantage. But even Oslo-based Norwegian Air, SAS' most fierce competitor, operates many European flights under an Irish certificate, rather than a Norwegian one.
Over time, SAS CEO Rickard Gustafson said, SAS learned it could not profitably compete on some routes, such as Copenhagen to London, using the current model, where customers demand one-way tickets for 30 to 35 Euros, or roughly $33 to $39.
"If you know that your competitors, by flying from London to Scandinavia ra
