LONDON – Scandinavian carrier, SAS (SK) has announced a new route to the John F. Kennedy airport (JFK) from Copenhagen (CPH).
The bankruptcy-protected Scandinavian carrier already serves the Newark airport (EWR) from Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm, but will now serve both major New York airports.
Great connectivity
In a statement by SAS on November 24, the carrier announced the launch of flights to New York JFK International Airport . The new route to JFK will ensure their customers the offers of frequent departures to this convenient and efficient airport, including easy access to and from New York city.
On top of this, SAS is a Star Alliance member, allowing for customers to book connecting flights to a number of destinations. Apart from the improved connectivity, SAS customers can now easily travel from both the West and East-side of New York, as SAS continues to offer a service to Newark Airport.
The new route will be flown with a five-times-weekly frequency from Copenhagen’s Kastrup Airport (CPH), with a ramp up to daily flights for the summer season. In regards to all the terminals JFK has to offer, SAS will be utilizing Terminal 7 (T7).
SAS statement
Erik Westman, EVP & CCO, Network and Revenue management at SAS, stated the following: “We are very pleased to launch our new route to JFK. SAS offers a solid product to Newark Airport from Scandinavia, and we believe that this addition to JFK from Copenhagen will strengthen the New York offer to our customers.”
“The US is a strategic market for SAS, and we will continue to develop new routes and destinations whenever the right opportunity presents itself,”
Schedule
SAS feels a higher demand for the US routes this winter, meaning more and frequent departures. This winter alone, SAS will offer about 130 departures per week on a total of 12 routes.
With the JFK-route starting soon, the schedules are posted and go as follows, for the winter and summer periods:-
Winter 2022
Frequency: Monday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday
CPH-JFK: 18:25 – 21:30
JFK-CPH: 23:00 – 12:55
Summer 2023
Frequency: Daily
CPH-JFK: 19:20 – 22:00
JFK-CPH: 23:55 – 13:45
The first flight of this route is shown on SAS website as February 9, with the carrier’s Airbus A321neo LR aircraft being the selected aircraft for the route.
Still behind in post-pandemic recovery
Despite seeing greater demand, data from Radarbox.com clearly displays the carrier’s rough 2022, with the movement statistics beginning to deflect it too.
For the week of November 12-19, the airline handled 653 movements based on a seven-day rolling average provided by the flight tracking company.
Whilst this does represent an increase of 35.76% compared to the same period last year, the carrier is around 165 movements short of achieving pre-pandemic numbers.
This does mean that the airline still has a lot to do in terms of getting back to those numbers.
Overall
With the bankruptcy protected carrier starting operations to and from New York JFK, passenger and customers of SAS will as they mentioned, be able to chose the arrival or departure airport of their own choice, without being restricted to only one airport, which has been Newark until this point.
However, the JFK flight would require additional flights to Copenhagen, if you fly from Stockholm or Oslo, hence why the Newark (EWR) flight would be a bit simpler.
Regardless, SAS seem to be pretty confident of this route doing well, which seems likely.
