Mr. Lindegaard: SAS was founded almost 60 years ago when three national carriers from Denmark, Norway and Sweden were merged basically to create an international carrier to carry Scandinavians out into the new world after World War II. After that, the company grew and, when aviation was growing, also began to develop domestic operations. Of course, with Europe really growing in the 1950s and 1960s, our European operation outgrew all the intercontinental operations, and today we are primarily a European carrier and also a very big domestic Scandinavian carrier. We have still an intercontinental network, but of course, with four big carriers in Europe ' Lufthansa, Air France, KLM and British Airways ' really dominating that market, we are only a second-tier intercontinental carrier taking care of primarily point-to-point traffic from our Scandinavian customers. So the big portion of our network is now European and domestic. We're spreading out into the Baltic Sea region and building up a presence in Finland and in all of the Baltic countries. We also have a substantial operation in Spain. Apart from our airline operations, we do have a number of other activities as well. We are one of the major maintenance, repair and overhaul operations (MRO) in Europe. We have a big ground handling company, which is also separated from the airline business, and then we have number of other businesses. I will just mention our hotel business, which is one of the largest hotel operators in Europe, where we team up with Carlson Hospitality out of Minneapolis in the US where we have the Radisson and Park Inn brands in Europe, Middle East and Africa.
TWST: What are the priorities for this company for the next 12 to 24
months, and what are the dynamics that shape those policies, strategies
and goals?
Mr. Lindegaard: We have been severely hit by the largest downturn in the
business in more general terms. As a traditional flag carrier, we've
been hit by all the new entrants in the low-cost market. The problem
that we're facing is that we're too big just to fade away because we are
the fourth largest airline group in Europe, but we're not big enough
really to survive based on our strength and our intercontinental network
like the Lufthansas and Air Frances of this world. Therefore, we have
defined another road toward profitability, which is to set up domestic
and Europe operations based on a low-cost platform, but still keep some
of the major network capabilities in aligning baggage handling, business
class service lounges, etc., as a traditional low-cost carrier does not
have. We're trying to create another way ' not being the traditional
flag carrier and not being the new low-cost entrants. So this second way
of operation is, of course, complicated, but we are really setting up a
new structure and a new company going forward.
Tickers included in this excerpt: SAS:ST
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