Company Watch - SAS Group.

Oct 9, 2006

SAS Scandinavian Airlines said yesterday it avoided a strike by Swedish cabin staff after reaching a deal with the local HTF union, which represents most of the airline's flight attendants. Meantime, Reuters reported that Danish cabin staff have threatened to strike and that negotiations on a new work agreement will continue into next week. Oct 5, 2006

SAS Avoids Swedish Strike, Faces Danish Walk-Out. SAS said on Wednesday it had avoided a strike by Swedish cabin staff, but the airline still faced threats of industrial action from Danish crew members. The carrier said in a statement that SAS Sweden would fly according to its normal timetable on Thursday after sealing a deal with the local HTF union, which represents most of the airline's cabin staff. Cabin staff in Denmark have also threatened to strike over a new collective working agreement. Verner Lundtoft Jensen, the chairman of the Danish Cabin Attendants Union, said a judge had called the union and SAS to mediation on Friday. The carrier, half of which is owned by the governments of Sweden, Denmark and Norway, has suffered in recent years from increasing competition from no-frills rivals, overcapacity and, more recently, record high oil prices. It has reduced costs and sold parts of its operations, but remains under pressure. Jensen said he expected negotiations to continue through to Tuesday next week. However, he thought a strike for all of the Danish union's 1,600 members was all but unavoidable. Oct 4, 2006

The SAS strike would halt all flights out of Copenhagen, including intercontinental flights. If SAS attempted to circumvent the strike by using Norwegian and Swedish staff to operate Copenhagen flights, Jensen said Danish ground staff unions would block the flights. "If we have to, we'll go down onto the runways to stop them," he said. If the mediator, high court judge Asbjorn Jensen, sees any chance of reaching an agreement between the firm and the union, he may postpone the strike for two weeks, which happened in a previous conflict two years ago, Jensen said. Oct 4, 2006

Security has taken on a new meaning with the introduction last week by SAS of a new system that checks that an item of baggage belongs to the same person that takes the flight. Experimentally tried at Lulea Airport, on the Baltic Sea near the Finnish border, passengers checking in baggage have their index finger scanned and finger print recorded. The information is stored in the SAS passenger register and correlates with the details on the baggage tag. A second fingerprint scan is carried out at the departure gate, ensuring that the person who checked in the baggage is the same person who boards the aircraft. All information is automatically erased when the customer completes the journey. The launch of the biometric security check-in marks the beginning of a four-week trial period. Assuming its success the new security measures will be introduced nationally across Sweden during autumn 2006. The airline plans to role out the system throughout Sweden, Denmark and Norway. http://www.scandinavian.net Oct 2, 2006

Editor: Aram Gesar, eMail: [e-mail]

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Oct 2, 2006