Summer skiing and ice hotels: the Atlanta-Copenhagen flight opens Northern Europe to southerners

It takes a village to raise a flight.

This is the approach of Scandinavian airlinesor SAS, which entered the Atlanta market this week with its inaugural non-stop landing from Copenhagen Monday.

Even though some new entrants face fierce competition from Delta Airlinesthe local carrier that operates one of the largest air hubs in the world at Hartsfield-JacksonSAS intends to become a member of the Delta family.

“It’s really like having a new baby,” SAS CEO Anko Van der Werff said of the new flight in a Global Atlanta interview. “Everyone is really optimistic. Everyone likes it. It’s a sign of growth and health, a sign that you’re doing something.

Coming to fruition just six months after the January announcement, the welcoming of SAS’s first-ever flight to Atlanta benefited from an extraordinary display of Southern hospitality from state and city government officials to the airport’s international affairs team.

“It really feels like a great rush – a really fantastic performance from all of our teams internally, but you can’t do it without the support hub. I’m not just trying to be polite; I really want to emphasize this: this was done very, very well by all the players here in Atlanta.

This bonhomie can be attributed in part to SAS’s decision to join the SkyTeam alliance, a move that will come into effect on September 1 as the troubled airline continues to move forward with its restructuring plan.

Indeed, during a “Touchdown Atlanta” lunch at the Hotel in Whitley In Buck’s HeadMr Van der Werff was surprised to hear applause after the change, which would mark the first time that a founding member of an airline alliance (Star Alliance) changed sides.

The reaction from the Atlanta audience contrasted sharply with the usual response: questions from members about the status of EuroBonus points or concerns about potential headaches related to future technology integrations, Mr. Van der Werff said.

“Welcome to Atlanta,” said Perry CantaruttiDelta’s senior vice president of alliances and international, who was also on the panel – to laughter and applause from the crowd.

The need for this move became evident after SAS decided to take a 19.9 percent stake in shares from Air France-KLMthe French-Dutch partnership which is both a founding member of SkyTeam and a transatlantic joint venture partner with Delta.

“It gets complicated when you have a major shareholder and you’re always in different alliances. It’s not really compatible,” Mr Van der Werff said.

This investment, which requires European Commission approval, would take effect after SAS withdraws from its Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, perhaps by this summer.

After the decision to change teams, SAS began to move away from Star Alliance hubs like Washington And Chicago and to places where SkyTeam is strong. That necessarily included Atlanta, the CEO and other executives said.

“You can not not fly to Atlanta,” said Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Paul Verhagen during the lunch debate. “Being not only the busiest airport in the United States, but also the largest hub of our future partner. »

During the event, Mr Van der Werff highlighted that Star Alliance had “held us back” by preventing SAS from having “full access to partnership potentials” – including moves towards joint ventures which have been a characteristic of Delta’s international strategy and SkyTeam’s growing growth. the integration.

“Joint ventures create this incredible, seamless customer experience,” Van der Werff said at the event. “And the second thing is that it creates a huge level of trust between companies: how you deal with each other, what can you build together. This unity is something I’ve seen throughout my 25 years, and when you work with partners that you really want to build something with, it’s unprecedented.

Although it will take some time to build this with Delta, Virgin Atlantic or other partners in Asia or beyond, it’s definitely an aspiration, said Mr. Van der Werff, who worked at Aeromexico as chief commercial officer when Delta purchased a 49 percent stake in that airline.

“I think SkyTeam has a different sense of belonging, maybe it’s too philosophical, but certainly of partnership,” he said.

For travelers to the southeastern United States: summer skiing and ice hotels

For travelers from Atlanta and the Southeast, the new SAS flight opens the door to about 30 new destinations, many in Northern Europe and the Baltics, that are not served by SkyTeam, Mr. Cantarutti from Delta.

“When you look at Atlanta, you can fly virtually nonstop from Atlanta to any place in the world except Scandinavia,” he said.

Beyond picturesque capitals like Stockholm And Oslo and 25 other cities in Sweden and Norway, locations accessible with one-stop shopping via Copenhagen include Svalbarda Norwegian island located above the polar CircleAnd Kirunaa town in northern Sweden where residents make the now famous Ice Hotel every year along the Thône River.

SAS also offers services to the three Baltic countries and seven cities Germanyincluding many business hubs with strong ties to Atlanta.

With global warming, longer winters are no longer a handicap, said Van der Werff, who spoke of a friend who went skiing a few weeks ago in northern Sweden.

“People are starting to go north,” he said. “Last year, with the heatwaves in southern Europe, the biggest winner, the biggest winner, was actually Denmark. It was the No. 1 country that people flocked to,” he said.

Ambassador of Denmark Jesper Sorenson said that while snow skiing may not be an option, Copenhagen offers Copenhagen, a waste-to-energy power plant with an urban mountain built on top. Guests can ski on Neveplast, a specialized plastic material designed to imitate snow.

This is just one example of how sustainability is ingrained in the Scandinavian mentality, Van der Werff said.

“If you’re from the States, it’s just a different vibe,” he said.

Strengthening Scandinavian trade ties with Georgia

Beyond tourism, tapping the growing Scandinavian business community in the Southeast for business travel and cargo is critical to the flight’s success, SAS executives said.

“You’re not going to build a flight that long on leisure traffic. It’s too risky,” Mr Van der Werff said.

With load factors (proportion of seats sold) approaching 90% on the passenger side, cargo was full on the inaugural flights, a positive sign for an airline that does business with the likes of Novo Nordisk and other pharmaceutical companies, the CEO added.

Mr. Sorenson, the ambassador, said the South was on the minds of more and more Danish companies like Kamstrupthe manufacturer of smart water meters whose inauguration he attended in March north of Atlanta.

“It’s a testament to what’s going on in our relationship. Our Danish-US relations have strengthened and deepened in recent years,” he said. “Every day, a number of Danish companies that were not previously present in the United States are now setting up shop. The opportunities are numerous. There are a lot of incentives, and I think one of the areas where that’s happening is here in Georgia and Atlanta and this area of ​​the United States. »

As noted during the ambassador’s meeting with a roundtable of Danish leaders in March, the Danish Chamber of Commerce of Georgia is restarting, having recently elected a new board of directors.

Peter Vang-Jensen, former Danish trade commissioner in Atlanta, was named new president. He remembers visiting SAS headquarters in Stockholm in 1981 with a delegation of business leaders from Atlanta, including an architect and a developer. John Portmanwho was then honorary consul of Denmark, proposed Atlanta as the airline’s next destination.

The timing was a little too early, he conceded in an email to Global Atlanta.

“SAS leaders listened politely to our promotion, then promptly forgot about it. Until today, 43 years later.

The daily flight has 262 seats and will operate five times a week in winter.

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