SAS aims to capture a larger share of the thriving Scandinavian leisure market

LCCs are a thorn in the eye of all established network carriers, and the environment is no different in Scandinavia where SAS Group's historic market share has been slowly crumbling off to the benefit predominantly of Norwegian Air Shuttle, which relentlessly has built a closely-knit network from bases in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. As a national airline partially owned by the governments of Sweden, Denmark and Norway (with a 21.4%, 14.3% and 14.3% shareholding respectively), SAS for too long has been a bystander, hoping that its ownership structure and lobbying would be sufficient to fence off the expansion of Norwegian and other budget airlines.

Now SAS is trying to fight back and it wants to win over the independent leisure travelers who flock to the no-frills operators. As part of its new strategic platform 4Excellence, which was outlined by the company's new president and CEO Rickard Gustafson in Sep-2011, the airline is expanding its offerings to strengthen its market share within the leisure travel segment.