Avoid SAS airlines

I booked a flight SFO to Paris via Copenhagen in 2025 and seem to remember that we could not access the booking website through wifi--I had to use a hotspot from my phone. I wonder if that's a related issue.

I am not here to defend the airline, but, when you hear one side of the story, it's worth
asking what the other side of the story might be.

I could ask questions as:

• are you sure you were booking on the official site and not some third party site? Same for the customer service # you called. Many stories about people Googling to find the phone # and getting routed to a scam #.
• there are 3 flights a day on SAS from WAW to CPH. Only one of them is in the morning. Are you saying that SAS could not move you to one of the other flights that day(i.e., all flights were cancelled, or just the morning ones). It is a bit hard to believe that SAS would have cancelled all flights and not made some kind of arrangement to put you on an afternoon flight, a LOT flight, or something like that. Since SAS is now affiliated with Air France/KLM, at worst they could have gotten you to CPH via AMS or CDG. It is suspicious that they did not, and makes me wonder just who you actually talked to.

If you are open to it, provide the date of your original flight that got cancelled. FlightRadar24
shows that all SAS flights between WAW and CPH flew last week as scheduled.

The policy of cancelling all segments if one segment is invalidated makes sense. If your
saga is accurate, what is less sensible is not getting in touch with you some way to
make new arrangements. Under the EC261 regulations, you would be owed 600EUR
per person compensation + duty of care expenses, so the airline would be pretty
motivated to not delay or leave you stranded.

I would be happy to answer your questions. Here you go!

1. Yes, we absolutely were using the actual SAS website. After we could not complete our booking on the website at the original lower price, we contacted SAS on the phone (800-221-2350) to see if we could obtain the lower fare. We were told we could not, and that we were blocked from purchasing the ticket at the original price because the system was “updating the prices”. This is not our confabulation, but the information directly from SAS. I believe that our conversation with the agent, the confirmation on his part regarding the price changes, and the fact that the tickets we booked through him were valid for our European trip, would prove that we were dealing with the real entity and that we were not spoofed.

2. Yes, there are several flights a day from Warsaw to Copenhagen. However, we had a connecting flight in Copenhagen to the US, and only the morning flights allowed us to arrive in Copenhagen early enough to take our connecting flight to the US. So, yes, we could have flown from Warsaw to Copenhagen on an afternoon flight, but we would have had to rearrange our trip and spend the night in Copenhagen, or change our departure date from Copenhagen. For us, it was easier and less disruptive for us to rearrange our trip to fly from Gdansk to Copenhagen to keep our same day flight to the US. Again, our complaint is not the fact that the flight was canceled and we had to rearrange, just that we were not notified of the same via text or email. (No, there was no email in our spam folder either.)

Secondly, there was absolutely no assistance from SAS regarding potentially changing us to another airline. We looked at other options ourselves, LOT, for example, but these flights were far more expensive at the late interval in which we had to book our flights.

So, the bottom line is this, we were going to have to make changes in our schedule to accommodate the SAS flight cancellation, it was a matter of what was least inconvenient. We have experienced similar circumstances in the past, but in each instance the airline (1) notified us in a timely manner via text and email, which was not done by SAS, and (2) the other airlines had provided alternative options without our having to do all the leg work. SAS offered no help whatsoever, and in fact, the only reason we discovered that they canceled our reservations from Copenhagen to the US was because as we were rearranging our flight from Poland to Copenhagen the agent informed us that our reservation for the flight to the US was canceled and we had been issued a refund! What?! Again, there was no other notification of that change from SAS in any form. The agent then explained that with any booking on SAS, if one segment of a trip is canceled, they cancel all segments of the same trip.

Now is it possible that we were misinformed regarding this policy? Sure, but either the policy or the interpretation of that policy on the part of the agent was wrong. Either way, no matter the policy or the agent, the end result was the same, and you know who is caught in that crossfire – the customer. However, if it was not the SAS policy, then why was our connecting segment from Copenhagen to the US canceled without our input or knowledge? At what point would we have become aware of this change on our own?

Given our experience, we felt that other travelers should be aware of the shortcomings in the way SAS communicates with passengers, and should they travel with SAS, to be alert and check the app daily, and if there is time in your schedule, verify with SAS a few days before departure that your flight is still scheduled as booked.

OP, thanks for the update/clarifications.

You don't have to justify to me that you worked directly with SAS, it was more that
less savvy travelers have fallen prey to scammers, and it could have been the
situation here, since we never really know how experienced everyone is.

As I noted, given that SAS cancelled your flights and did not rebook you, I would
consider filing for EC261 compensation. You will have to recount your experience
and may get pushback from the airline, but review the conditions and make sure
you meet them. You should also be able to get reimbursement for any additional
expenses you incurred to get to Gdansk.

Finally, while I don't doubt that your experience did happen, your assertions on
this being the general business practice for SAS is a bit extreme. It is true that
the IT capabilities of many European companies is not necessarily up to those
of US companies, but, if SAS did this to everyone as a general practice, they
would have gone out of business a long time ago.

Did you ask if other SkyTeam airlines could accommodate you? Surely KLM or Air France had connections that day, and SkyTeam to Atlanta is an extra easy destination.

When my son had a canceled flight on SAS the airline was proactive on rebooking on Swiss (when it was a StarAlliance airline) and the agent told me to file for EU compensation. My son made it only slightly late and the flight ended up being free +$50 profit.

Note to above: it doesn't matter if the airline rebooks you and you arrive at the correct time. All that matters is the cancellation to get the penalty funds.

What I find as odd is the fact SAS cancelled your flight from Copenhagen to the US. How did they know that you would not get to Copenhagen by another mode of transportation in time to take that flight back to the US? That was an assumption on their part. I would fill out any form possible and claim every single Euro you spent due to their cancellation of both flights, hotels, meals, taxis, etc.

When companies screw up they have to take responsibility. It does sound like in your situation you have every right to claim SAS is pathetic as an airline based on all the occurrences that happened to you from beginning to the end. Good luck in your filing.

Yes, we absolutely were using the actual SAS website. After we could not complete our booking on the website at the original lower price, we contacted SAS on the phone (800-221-2350) to see if we could obtain the lower fare. We were told we could not, and that we were blocked from purchasing the ticket at the original price because the system was “updating the prices”. This is not our confabulation, but the information directly from SAS. I believe that our conversation with the agent, the confirmation on his part regarding the price changes, and the fact that the tickets we booked through him were valid for our European trip, would prove that we were dealing with the real entity and that we were not spoofed.

This has actually also happened to me but not with SAS. From memory I was using Skyscanner or Kayak which takes you through to a third party website and it was on one of those resellers that I experienced the good fare being timed out and the bad fare being substituted in, sorry I don't remember which airline, but I would have been heading to Germany. I think we just didn't go for that flight or airline in the end and tried one of the resellers with more stars. I also experienced being nickeled and dimed by one of those resellers (i.e a charge to select a seat, a charge to bring a suitcase, etc.). I rejected that reseller. It pays to shop around!

Lavandula

Sorry to hear about your experience. SAS went down the discount airline path for a while and still tends to be cheaper than other options. It works out great when everything goes smoothly, but when things go sideways, it goes badly. The transatlantic discount airline mindset essentially is: "You made your decision based on price, and you chose the cheap ticket. Stinks to be you when things go sideways. That money you saved goes into providing service at other airlines. We don't do that. We just cancel tickets and give refunds. We may or may not notify you of that."

Air France/KLM is in the process of acquiring majority ownership in SAS with full regulatory approval expected by the end of the year. But old corporate cultures are hard to change. Maybe it will get better at SAS eventually, but, then again, the price will also be higher.

That's REALLY too bad Allan, I'm so sorry. I would definitely file for compensation, I think you'll receive about $650 per person per flight. That really is horrible service not contacting you 24 hours before flight, yikes!

So, one has to wonder if there is dynamic pricing that being practiced by this airline. That hasn't been my experience. I book 3x per year on SAS & just made 2 sets of reservations ARN to SFO for next year, both went through without a hitch. However, yesterday their website went down for hours and hold times calling went to +2 hours, so they definitely have tech issues!!

It happens that I fly almost exclusively SFO on SAS to ARN via CPH, and YES, they have snafus on their bookings, (I will get to my story below). I use this route because it's shorter and it tends to be about 25%-30% cheaper than UA via FRA. UA has raised their prices sharply for the route to ARN since SAS left Star Alliance & joined KLM/ Air France on One World, go figure.

According to my techie hubby, the integration with KLM/Air France is ongoing, apparently it's likely to take a few YEARS to get all the details worked out.

Now for my story - last autumn I logged onto the website a few days early as I always do, just to double-check details and they had me departing A DAY EARLY out of SFO. I called and the agent was so relaxed about it, it was disconcerting. She said to 'just refresh the page' and guess what, the correct departure date popped up.

I guess I've adjusted my expectations for the tech screw ups, based upon a significant price savings and better itinerary, but. I'm flying back to SFO in mid November so will scrutinize the itinerary, thanks for the reminder, and so so sorry this happened to you.

Thank you to everyone who has responded! I was completely unaware of the EC261 process, so a special thanks to shoeflyer for starting the discussion of that option. We will proceed with that application and see what happens.

Safe travels to you all!

If you haven't already done so, you will find the EC261 claim procedure on the SAS website:

https://www.flysas.com/en/support-information/claims

All of your supporting documents (boarding passes, any personal expenses related to the cancellations or delays, etc.) will be useful for evaluating the financial compensation.

Under new EU regulations starting in October 2027, airlines will be prohibited from cancelling all subsequent flight segments of the same booking if you miss one flight in that itinerary.

I'll add my two cents: SAS has been the worst airline experience I've had in the past ten years. Just awful customer service, poorly maintained equipment and surly flight attendants. Won't fly them again if there's an alternative.

I had a pleasant experience with SAS this past May flying Chicago to Copenhagen and Copenhagen back to Chicago.

SAS was no better or worse than any other airline I have flown recently.

I had no experience with customer service, but the flight attendants were all super nice.

I will add that SAS did something similar to us about 4 years ago and we haven’t flown them since. One segment of our return flight was cancelled, MUC to CPH, so the they cancelled the entire flight. We called and told them we could easily fly FRA to CPH to SFO or just nonstop to and from CPH and get ourselves to Germany by train but nope, they’d already cancelled our flights and wouldn’t work with any ticketing at all. We told them they were taking money away from tourism in Denmark as we’d offered to begin and end our trip in Copenhagen but no the flight was cancelled entirely because of the MUC to CPH segment being cancelled.

My thoughts about SAS is that they are best at their short hops within Norway. BTW, we need to transfer to SAS from KLM at CDG, and were surprised about a practice of these, popup checkin desks. The weirdest thing ever. The flight was fine and the boarding was fine. It took us a couple of hours to figure this out in speaking my intermediate French.

A few years back, I was on a cruise and met a couple who flew SAS.

SAS forgot to put their luggage on the plane. And they never received their luggage the entire pre-cruise and cruise.

To make matters worse, for the first time, they checked everything. They did not carry anything on the plane.

Checking everything was the idea of the husband. The wife was fuming and the husband had to buy her beautiful Russian Nesting Dolls to make up when we were in Tallinn.

My memory is that they never bought any other clothing the entire cruise. I was told that SAS was going to give them $100 for the mistake. I do not know if it was $100 each or if it was $100 for each piece of luggage or just $100.

I have never flown SAS but this story has stayed with me.

I book Lufthansa and Swiss for a reason because if something goes south I can br rebooked on a new fight and given a hotel voucher if its the airline fault. Do you realize that budget carries have no fallback? They may tell you here is your refund now go pound salt.Even with the EU rules you may still pay more because you purchase a ticket last minute.

Its not the airlines fault you choose Basic Economy on Air Europa.

In fact it was only $50 more to choose Classic Economy with luggage and seat assignments and be eligible for bidding for an upgrade which I did on Lufthansa and Swiss and I paid the fix offer from Frankfurt to Málaga to Business for 180 Euros and $610 fixed offer for LH Premium Economy when they wanted double 24 hours before.

Sorry being cheap up front can be a nightmare.