SAS axe Seattle, Icelandair take over

Scandinavian Airlines has axed its service between Seattle and Copenhagen. This comes after 42 years flying the nonstop route.

Scandinavian Airlines has axed its service between Seattle and Copenhagen. This comes after 42 years flying the nonstop route.

SAS used to fly five days a week between Seattle and Copenhagen (with SK938/937), and actually added a sixth day just last May.

Sveneric Persson, an SAS vice president, said in a release that the Sweden-based airline has been "severely affected by the current recession," and is restructuring to focus more on business travel and on travel within Scandinavia. It had hoped to see the route through til 2010 and make a decision then, but Icelandair forced SAS's hand, and the route was axed much more quickly.

SAS carried 137,000 passengers through Sea-Tac airport last year, 4.7 percent of Seattle's international passenger traffic.

In part it seems that Icelandair may be to blame. It has begun service from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to 18 European cities, via its hub in Reykjavik, Iceland. It seems that with this competition, SAS just couldn't continue to fly the route. The airline touts an all-Boeing fleet and will serve SEA with a 183-seat Boeing 757. There will be four flights a week, departing on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays at 3:30 PM and arriving in Reykjavik at 6:45 AM.

SAS said it would continue to offer connections to Copenhagen from Seattle via Chicago, Newark and Washington, D.C, however it will be hard for passengers to mnake the connections. Other airlines do however fly nonstop fights between Seattle and Europe. Northwest flies daily between Seattle and Amsterdam; British Airways flies between Seattle and London; Air France flies between Seattle and Paris; and Lufthansa flies between Seattle and Frankfurt.