Scandinavian Airlines is a leading airline in the Scandinavian countries offering multi-national service. SAS-Scandivanian Airlines system is a Star Alliance founding member and is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden.
The main hubs are Stockholm-Arlanda Airport, Oslo-Gardermoen Airport and Copenhagen-Kastrup Airport. However, Copenhagen is the centre for intercontinental and European flights.
The SAS has founded AirBaltic, Air Greenland, Spanair, Linjeflyg, Thai Airways International, and Scanair, the former charter airline. Apart from these, it owns 49% stake in Estonian Air and 20% stake in bmi (British Midland Airways).
Scandinavian Airlines System was launched owing to partnership between flag carriers of these nations on 1st August 1946.
The flag carriers were Svensk Interkontinental Lufttrafik, Sweden, Det Danske Luftfartselskab, Denmark and Det Norske Luftfartselskap, Norway. This partnership was done aiming better handling of intercontinental air traffic to Scandinavia. Scandinavian Airlines began its operations on 17th September, 1946.
In 1948, the founding companies coordinated European operations and eventually, in 1951, they merged to form the SAS Consortium.
This airline in 1954 became the foremost airline to operate a transpolar route such that it started from Copenhagen halting at Greenland reaching Los Angeles.
This became the favorite among Hollywood celebrities as well as American tourists wishing to travel to Europe.
It also employed the North Pole route as shortcut and the introduced in 1959 the first jet aircraft service. SAS, twelve years later put Boeing 747 Jumbo jet firstly into service.
Scandinavian Airline flights cover many destinations including Seattle, Chicago, Newark and Washington in US.
It is also one of the preferred international airlines in India. This airline also successfully networked with Lufthansa, Air Canada, United Airlines and Thai Airways International to form in 1997 the global Sat Alliance. In 2004, this airline got segregated into four companies such as Scandinavian Airlines Sverige AN handling air traffic to European countries from Stockholm, Scandinavian Airlines Norge AS to control air traffic in Norway,
Scandinavian Airlines Danmark AS manages air traffic to other European countries from Copenhagen and Scandinavian International AS handles the intercontinental air traffic.
These flights also cater all the major Asian destinations namely, India, Japan and China, besides Greece, Finland, Netherlands, Milan, Iceland, Poland, Turkey and Luxemburg.
