With SAS in sight of achieving its goal of SEK14bn (€1.5bn) cuts by the end of 2005, the airline is very different from the one that Jorgen Lindegaard took over as ceo in 2001.
Then it was the carrier with the highest costs and the highest prices in Europe and it had the luxury of limited competition in the Nordic region.
The terrorist attacks on America on 9/11 and the rise and rise of the low cost carriers changed the aviation industry for good and legacy airlines have had to adapt to this new environment.
One emerging difference was, as Mr Lindegaard observed, that “people do not want to pay what they used to pay to fly around Europe anymore.”
Along with other carriers, SAS had to change. Mr Lindegaard and his team have aimed to cut costs by 40%, a huge amount, with a revamped business model and by making their cost and prices among the lowest in Europe. It was their route to survival.
But the airline that has emerged is a very different carrier from the one of 2001. Fares are lower and the number of people using business class has dropped significantly to pinpoint two obvious differences. But judging by Mr Lindegaard's remarks at the press briefing he gave in Copenhagen last week, the changes will go on.
The aim seems to be clear: to make SAS the dominant airline in Northern Europe which here stretches eastwards to St. Petersburg and Moscow and taking in the Baltic States where it has a significant stake in Air Estonia and airBaltic.
SAS will be flying more point to point services and Mr Lindegaard stressed that he expected the feeder flights for the hub operations to be profitable in their own right.
This seems to be a greater priority than its long haul services. These, faced with competition from the likes of Lufthansa, BA and Air France/KLM and reliant mainly on the relatively small population of Scandinavia, have long been a tough market for SAS.
Currently it serves 11 destinations, two from Stockholm and nine from Copenhagen. While Mr Lindegaard made clear there was no intention to cut any routes, he also made it equally clear that there were no plans to expand. It is a step nearer to the standard low cost model.
A second area where SAS has decided to buck the legacy airline trend is in fares. While other traditional carriers have sought to simplify their fare structure, SAS added a third choice between its business and economy class offering.
Called Economy Extra on long haul and Economy flex on short haul, it offers a blend between price and comfort. It seems to be working but again there is a risk that it will be those who previously travelled business class will downgrade rather than those who travelled economy will upgrade.
Mr Lindegaard also talked of “pay for what your get tickets”, for example business class tickets which did not include entry to the lounge and were thus less expensive and dynamic and flexible scheduling which responded more quickly to demand.
This would be an advance on the current winter/summer schedules where frequency can be altered to meet demand to a situation where frequency might change on a more regular basis to cope with perhaps a major event.
“There are times of the year when you need more capacity and times when you don't,” he said.
Mr Lindegaard said he was not worried falling yield as long as he got an increased load factor.
“We are accepting falling yield. I don't care if the price comes down as long as we get the load. When the load is in the 70s, you can accept a lower yield. But you have to be able to control
it. If your load is at 60%, yield management does not work.”
What is emerging is an airline more focused on short haul than long, on flexible scheduling to meet changing demand, on pursuing what some would still regard as a complicated fare structure and perhaps most importantly, on seeking to dominate the airways of northern Europe.
It is also something of an experiment, taking what it sees as the best aspects of the low cost and traditional models and blending them together. It might just work.