Drama......

SAS raises $75 million from Heathrow slot sale
Mar 27, 2017 Victoria Moores

Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) has sold two pairs of London Heathrow slots to an undisclosed buyer, raising $75 million from the transaction.

Before the sale, SAS had the sixth largest Heathrow slot portfolio with 19 daily slot pairs. This has now been narrowed to 17 pairs, although under the deal SAS can continue to use the two pairs for up to three years.

“Even after the transaction, SAS will continue to offer a strong and comprehensive network between Scandinavia and London Heathrow. The intention is to maintain the seat capacity to/from London Heathrow through the use of larger aircraft on remaining departures,” SAS said.

SAS, which operates from London Heathrow to Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm and Stavanger, will post the proceeds of the sale to its second quarter results.

This is not the first time SAS has sold off part of its Heathrow slot portfolio. In 2015, the airline sold a pair of slots to Turkish Airlines and—in a separate transaction—transferred a pair to an unnamed major carrier.

 

I think Stanstead is more B6 style. The mid-America of London. And....that carrot won't work on the pilot group. Lemme guess, they announce it right before their 1st CBA offer and then threaten to pull the pond flying if we don't accept a subpar CBA?

 

Bart, is that you? Oh, maybe Marc?

 

pond flying wouldn't affect the CBA vote IMO...I don't think the guys here have SJS...

 

Bigger aircraft bigger suit case. No thanks, I enjoy my two timezone flying.


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Here's your timeline for 321LR, contract, next hiring bubble, etc...

I suggested another soft ball field at The Lodge, could have saved the Co $74 million.

 

2 Pair.... BOS & JFK.

Always wanted to see Mr. Bean's house, CBA be damned!

 

One a day would suck pretty bad for customers I think. Still, probably not us.

 

One a day BOS/JFK would suck, but it's a start in the busiest TATL route. If timed right then the two flights could be complimentary. You can connect in BOS to almost the same number of places as you can connect in JFK.

I still don't think this is us, but the 3yr timeline would be about right.

I could also see us leasing/buying slots from TAP since we're buddy-buddy with Neeleman now and they have a handful of LHR slots. And/or if you want to get really wild, we could find some LCY slots for trans-Atlantic with those CSeries we're gonna get

 

One a day may not actually be that bad and we can probably find a second set in the future. Agree the 2-3 year timeline looks good and if the slots were going to one of the big 3 in the US they probably would just say so, and not want to wait 3 years to use them.

So, probably a company LIKE ours, but there are several LIKE ours when you consider US and foreign.

That said, we have all read tea leaves before and we have all been mostly wrong. So, I wouldn't get our hopes up. Especially as Robin seems to be more and more timid and more and more concerned with what Wall Street thinks of our margins. We can't even grow a presence out west beyond swapping a couple of core flights for Mint flights and people in the middle of this country still have no idea who JetBlue is.

Too timid for SJC, too timid for LAS, too timid for ONT, PHX or SAN. We just dawdle and contemplate while other airlines get aggressive.