Flying with SAS - a Frequent Traveller's Dream Airline

I moved to Sweden from the USA a little over 4 years ago. My current occupation is writing travel reviews for various publications. Naturally, this means I have flown with a whole lot of airlines. My recent trip to visit my offspring in the USA was with SAS... and it was wonderful. I flew into Chicago O'Hare from CPH in Copenhagen, Denmark. Total flight time: eight hours.

Let's start with check-in: Now I am the first to admit that ease of check-in is closely related to what city you are in, and the people in Copenhagen are fabulous from the get-go. Therefor it is no wonder that my check-in with SAS was a breeze. I arrived at CPH about 4 hours early because that's just how my personality is. I hate rushing at the last minute. Although policy is to check in with the airline 2 hours before flight for International flights, they took me immediately. The gal was all smiles and extremely helpful.

I am handicapped to the point that I need a walker for any trek longer than about 50 feet. I had called the SAS corporate office in advance to ensure I would have a wheelchair waiting, and that I could bring my walker with no problems. My wheelchair arrived very rapidly upon check-in, and the guy was happy to push both that and my walker to the handicap holding area near my terminal. There I was free to wander the shops with my walker until time to meet that nice young man again who then wheeled me right up to the airplane door. Once at the door to the aircraft, they offered to gate-check my walker for me at no additional charge. As it turned out, the flight was not full so they managed to put the walker in an overhead for me for faster access once we landed. Excellent service!

Also at the gate, they allowed me to upgrade from the cheap seats to Economy Extra for 10,000 miles off my SAS Eurobonus card. That is really quite cheap considering this was an 8 hour flight... and worth every mile. See, that's the other thing about SAS. Their frequent flyer program is outstanding. I have never had to fight for my miles, and using those miles once accumulated was no hassle whatsoever. I can check the SAS website anytime to see my balance, and they send me updates each month both via email and snail mail. My one and only gripe about anything to do with SAS is that I had originally asked for everything to be in English, and they still tend to send my updates in Swedish... but that is really a very small gripe given their top of the line customer service on everything else.

Once on the plane, they assisted me while I hobbled to my seat and helped put my cane in the overhead for me. I looked around the plane while it was empty (since handicapped people board fist) and was very glad I had opted to upgrade. I ended up with several precious extra inches of leg space, and ended up with free meals, snacks, and drinks. Apparently in the Economy seats you have to buy snack boxes and/or meals if you want them. I am ashamed to say that I cannot now recall what I chose for lunch, but I do know I made note that it exceeded your regular dreaded airline food. It was actually very, very good. The flight attendants were always smiling and I never had to want for anything at all.

As far as in-flight entertainment goes, SAS once again reigns supreme. They have in-seat screens and a slew of movie choices. I watched 4 movies during this flight, and they are 100% free, unlike with Frontier Airlines who make you swipe your card before you can even watch a silly sitcom rerun. Other options were various music channels, and quite a few video games to play. While I own my own set of headphones for flights, I did use theirs this time and man.. they were more comfortable than my personal very expensive set!

While my butt usually has a tendency to go to sleep on long flights, these seats were very well suited for a long flight. I won't say I got zero numbing, but it was a lot less than with other airlines on similar flights. In the Economy Extra seat I had not only the extra legroom, but also a footrest, and a slightly wider seat. Score!

Upon landing, the SAS flight crew had not forgotten about me at all as has happened with other airlines. They were spot on with getting my walker & cane down from the overheads and made sure my wheelchair was ready & waiting in Chicago.

Overall, SAS is hard to beat. Lufthansa comes close, and Qantas closer still... but I have to move SAS to the number one position on my list of favorite airlines after this latest flight. Everyone and everything was above and beyond expectations. Go SAS!