Airline: SAS
Flight #: SK1420
Route: CPH-ARN
Class: Economy
Seat: 22A
Date: Tuesday 29th August 2023
With the first leg of my unplanned tour of Scandinavia completed, I had a booked 55-minute connection at Copenhagen airport to make the second leg, a flight from Copenhagen to Stockholm. Thankfully my flight from Aarhus (read about that here) had arrived in early, giving me an extra 10 minutes and reducing the stress slightly.
Thankfully my worry over the connection was unfounded as having arrived at gate B19, I found that my next flight was departing from gate B10, just a two-minute walk down the concourse. Finding a quiet spot at the adjacent gate B11 to with a view of the tarmac, I was able to plane spot for a while before our aircraft arrived. The aircraft for leg two of my journey was SE-DOX, a six-year-old Airbus A320neo which arrived on a flight from the Swedish capital.
After a quick turnaround, boarding started at 1128, with me in the third of five boarding groups, group D, as for some reason SAS don’t use ‘C’ as a boarding group. Boarding didn’t take long, with it announced as complete just 14 minutes later. The cabin onboard the SAS A320neo is in the standard 3-3 configuration, and I was in seat 22A which had reasonable legroom, probably helped by the streamlined seats. Each seat also had a USB socket and Wi-Fi is available onboard although access to this costs extra.
With boarding complete I had lucked out with an empty middle seat for the hour and fifteen-minute flight between the two Scandinavian capitals. We pushed back at 1152 and after a short nine-minute taxi, took off at 1201 from runway 22R. Taking an almost immediate U-turn to head across the Øresund, passing over the Øresund bridge and heading north-east across Sweden.
Not long after departure, the crew began the onboard service which included free tea or coffee, with snacks and other drinks being available to purchase. Whilst I decided not to buy anything extra, there did seem to be a reasonable selection on offer. Getting a coffee, I was able to enjoy about half of this before the guy in the aisle seat knocked the middle table we were sharing and spilt my coffee. Thankfully he spilt it over himself rather than me!
Unfortunately, a sea of cloud blocked the view of the ground for most of the flight, although a few breaks allowed me to see glimpses of the Swedish countryside. When the cloud did clear, we were crossing Sweden’s eastern coast to head over the Baltic Sea on approach to Stockholm. As we headed over the city, I was able to see Stockholm’s city centre airport, Bromma, along with the Friends Arena, home of AIK Fotball and the nearby rail yard at Solna.
Landing at 1252, our flight time was just 51 minutes, and we had a very short three-minute taxi to our stand. The aircraft doors opened, and we headed out of gate 5 into Arlanda airport’s older pier which is primarily used for intra-Scandinavia flights. With a much more relaxed connection in Stockholm of over three hours, I headed towards the SAS lounge, access for which I’d been able to purchase as an addon to my ticket. However, my review of that will be included in the next blog, my review of the final leg of my journey home, Stockholm to Heathrow.
As with my first flight from Aarhus, this flight from Copenhagen to Stockholm with SAS impressed me. It was quick, comfortable and the crew were great. The extra touches that SAS seems to have over other European ‘full service’ airlines such as the USB sockets, Wifi provision (even with the cost) and free tea and coffee certainly puts them apart from competitors. With the final leg of my journey being the longest, I was certainly looking forward to seeing if SAS could live up to the expectation they had created.
Lounge 0*
Seat/Facilities 4*
Food 3*
Service 5*
Punctuality 5*
Overall Rating 17/25 (read about my rating system here!)
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