While not deliberate, I found myself on the inaugural SAS flight from Bangkok to Copenhagen, operated by an Airbus A350-900 in business class. With superb dining and excellent service onboard, SAS remains one of my favorite carriers.
SAS A350-900 Business Class Review (BKK-CPH)
When I noticed some frequent flyer award space from Bangkok to Copenhagen, I thought it would be a perfect way to get to Germany to meet up with my family after my United flight to Manila. Aeroplan allows stopovers on one-way tickets for 5,000 miles, so the journey from BKK-FRA via CPH cost 85,000 Aeroplan miles.
After arriving in Bangkok from Manila on Thai Airways, I had a bit of a wait in order to check-in and spent it at The Coffee Club, getting work done just in case the internet did not work onboard.
Check-in opened three hours prior to departure.
Business Class passengers are invited to use the Thai Airways Lounge and also have access to the Singapore Airlines Lounge and Turkish Airlines Lounge, all part of the Star Alliance network. However, I prefer the Oman Air Lounge in Bangkok (part of the Priority Pass network) which I find to be even better.
> Read More: Oman Air Lounge Bangkok Review
I passed the time by getting a 90-minute Thai massage (cost about $35) which loosened me up for the long flight.
Inaugural Flight
It turned out I was flying on the night of the inaugural service from BKK-CPH. SAS first launched flights to Bangkok almost 75 years ago, but has not flown to Bangkok in nearly a decade. That has changed with new seasonal flights operating three times per week.
While I noticed some SAS staff from Copenhagen on the ground in Bangkok, there was no special festivities at the gate or onboard to commemorate the inaugural (I expect there was on the CPH-BKK outbound).
Boarding
We boarded at 11:16 pm after some initial confusion by ground staff with the SAS flight boarding software.
SAS (SK) 974
Bangkok (BKK) – Copenhagen (CPH)
Tuesday, October 31, 2023
Depart: 11:50 PM
Arrive: 06:40 AM+1
Duration: 12hr, 50min
Distance: 5,371 miles
Aircraft: Airbus A350-900
Seat: 6D (Business Class)
Onboard, the crew warmly greeted me and was adding flags to the cabin (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, which represent the theoretical axis of the Scandinavian Airlines System…though these days it is only Denmark that is still funding the carrier).
Seat
The business class cabin includes 40 Thompson Aero Vantage XL seats spread over two cabins, with a galley and lavatories in between.
Each seat is 22 inches wide and converts into a 78 Ince lie-flat bed. The seat has a bi-fold tray table that slides out from the console and includes a personal device holder that can support a tablet or mobile phone.
I was seated in a center seat since I was traveling with a friend and found the footwell to be spacious enough for me to rest without trouble.
On the side is a compartment that houses the headphones and below it the seat controls and a universal outlet and USB-A charging port. The light brown leather provided a great contrast to the gray seat.
Speaking of rest, SAS no longer has Hästens bedding. Bedding is now from Dux and included a soft pillow and blanket. While the bedding is more limited than carriers like United which offers extra pillows and mattress pads, the blanket and pillow were ideal for rest.
There are no overhead air vents onboard, though the cabin did not get warm.
Amenity Kit
Like the bedding, the amenity kit is also Dux-branded in a cute striped bag. Contents included:
- Verso face moisturizer + lip balm
- Swedish Stockings (high quality socks)
- The Humble Co dental kit
- Dux-branded eyeshade
- Earplugs
Food + Drink
In my experience, every SAS Business Class flight is a culinary treat and this flight was no exception. Menus were handed out after boarding, though were simply printed on paper (it was explained that the “real” menus were stuck in a local printer).
Dinner
After takeoff, a hot towel was offered along with a choice of beverage and a bowl of cashews. I had a glass of Champagne, which was Charles Heidsieck, Brut Réserve MV.
For my appetizer, I chose smoked duck and salami with whole grain mustard mayonnaise, truffle mushroom, and pickled vegetables. It was served with a green salad, cheese course with fig chutney (which I saved until after the main course), and a section of fresh bread, including my favorite Rugbrød (rye bread). I love Rugbrød and SAS managed to cater the best “European” bread out of Bangkok.
My friend ordered the alternate appetizer, a Thai roasted chicken salad with pomelo (grapefruit), cucumber, red radicchio, and chili.
Dinner was served by trolley, an old-school approach to service that I quite loved. If you want to guarantee your first choice, do choose a seat toward the front of the cabin. Also, the “chefs” are back on SAS (two flight attendants wear chef uniforms during the main meal service).
Every main course option sounded sumptuous, but I took a gamble on the red meat and made the right call.
Beef short rib with bone marrow butter, thyme sauce, mash potato, French beans and grilled pumpkin
The meat was incredibly tender and could be cut with a fork.
My friend ordered the fish:
Grilled seabass with choo chee sauce served with riceberry, kale, and shitake mushrooms
This dish also garnered great praise.
I rounded out the meal with a Lemon meringue tart and Rooibos tea to aid in my sleeping.
Mid-Flight Snack
While the A350 does not have the self-serve espresso machine like on the A330, flight attendants set up a self-serve buffet in the galley between business class cabins. High-quality snacks like Swedish cashews and potato chips were offered, along with sandwiches, soft drinks, and candy.
I think Smiling salted cashews are the best in the world and I love drinking Froosh smoothies whenever I travel on SAS.
Breakfast
Two hours prior to arrival breakfast service commenced. It began with a hot towel and service was offered Smörgåsbord-style from carts.
I tried:
- Overnight oats with mango and papaya
- A hot croissant with Morten Heiberg marmalade
- Charcuterie and cheeses with mixed fresh vegetables
- Onion & cheese ege frittata with ratatouille and grilled bacon
- Freshly squeezed Tangerine juice
- Coffee
Everything was delicious! SAS offers espresso onboard and I ordered a cappuccino which was quite good, but the strong coffee was even better and I found myself drinking several cups of it.
Once again, SAS receives high marks for its onboard meal service, which is truly a highlight of any SAS flight.
Prior to landing, passengers were offered a box of chocolate truffles from Hedh Escalante, a chocolate producer in Malmö, Sweden.
IFE + Wi-Fi
Business class passengers receive free wi-fi, which worked quite well for most of the flight (simply input your first and last name plus booking reference number). There were a few areas in which it was down, including for about 30 minutes at one point, but when it worked it worked well (fast).
Each business class seat is equipped with a 18.5″ HD touchscreen display along with a passenger service unit. SAS has improved its library of content and there were many movies, TV shows, games, and music to choose from. I watched a 2022 sci-fi/romance movie called The Time Capsule which was decent.
While you could not order drinks from your seat, the system also had a section that listed all available beverages.
Noise-cancelling headphones are provided and were collected about 30 minutes before landing.
My favorite feature of the IFE was the tailcam, even though are flight operated wholly in darkness.
Lavatory
Business class on the SAS A350 includes one lavatory in the front of the forward cabin and two between business class cabins. The starboard lavatory is intended for the use of handicapped passengers and is larger. At all points the lavatory was clean and I appreciated the eucalyptus inside, which I think was fake but still looked nice.
SAS vs. Thai Airways
Do note that Thai Airways also serves this route and has a flight time about an hour shorter. That is because Thai uses Russian airspace while SAS does not. SAS still codeshares on the Thai flight (TG950).
Service
Finally, I want to commend the crew of SK974 for their warm, kind, friendly, and engaging service onboard. The crew was top-notch and provided such excellent service that was American in terms of warmth and yet perfectly polished and professional as well. I would love to fly with this crew again.
CONCLUSION
We landed on-time in Copenhagen. There were huge lines at the passport control, but they moved quickly.
This was my first time flying SAS on the A350 in business class and it was a pleasure. I hope to do so again before SAS leaves Star Alliance.
I had a great flight CPH JFK on the A330 in J. Great food and service!
By the way, I really love how BKK has a separate waiting area for the Elites/Business/First Class passengers, so there’s no chance of gate lice doing gate lice stuff.
I hope to see SkyTeam redemptions on SAS in the future!
It was relayed to me that FlyerTalk doesn’t really like the use of the term “gate lice”, and that is even as this phrase is in the list of terms on the site that people reference to understand the “inside baseball” — or is that “inside cricket” — talk on the site.
I used to use Thai a bunch from CPH-BKK back when I had relatives working in Bangkok, but I only rarely used SAS on the route. Thai F was a treat back then; but SAS business not so much.
After SAS goes into SkyTeam, I don’t expect I’ll get more value out of my mileage accounts when trying to book mileage tickets to get between CPH and BKK.
I look forward to flying them when they are in Sky Team 🙂
Yes, enjoy your 300K mile redemption for a standard and hardly interesting J.
No need to be salty. We could get 50k pts J redemptions from the East Coast if they adopt Flying Blue.
Let me know how that goes.
A friend of mine just flew for 12.5K across the Atlantic in Business using AF/KLM points. Try that with a Star Alliance carrier.
@Stuart Flying Blue can be great value for AFKL redemptions. With the current promo award offers, one can travel from anywhere in Europe to MEX/CUN in premium economy (which is all you really need for a day flight- one that often sells for four-figure sums), together with up to 46kg of luggage, for 22.5k miles. I recently redeemed 50k to get a friend out of a tight spot when he had his passport stolen in Chile and had to fly from SCL to ATH on a single ticket, the service in AF long haul business class isn’t bad at all (short haul is a different story, they recently served me a meal that was literally still frozen), and the surcharges aren’t absurd like on BA and LH. I am not a huge fan of AFKL, as I loathe AMS and I have had to sue them twice in the space of a year, but the FFP can indeed offer substantial value.
Just wait until that means getting hit by substantial “fuel surcharges”/YQ on mileage tickets with SAS flights — thereby making “mileage tickets” into “miles+money” tickets.
Currently, SAS flights don’t come with fuel surcharges in any of the programs from which I redeem miles for award travel bookings with SAS flights. I am betting that AF/KL will want to see that changed and it will probably end up changing to my detriment.
I’ve found surcharges with KLM/AF to be quite reasonable. What good is a United ticket that has a surcharge of $5.60 but wants to to charge me 150K for a one way in Business across the Atlantic. At that point I’m absolutely ok with paying around $300 + around 50K in AF/KLM points.
Exactly, and free stopover too!
Who knew that Hawaiian Airlines had a flight from Bangkok to Osaka after midnight ?
JAL codeshare
Hi Matthew, from where do you get the information that TG950/951 uses Russian airspace? I can’t seem to verify that information, at least based on the past flights in FR24. The THAI flight from Stockholm to Bangkok also doesn’t overfly Russian airspace, from what I can see. Appreciate your content, merry christsmas to you and your family!
I’ll double check.
I flew CPH-BKK on Thai in April..No flying in Russian airspace. Poland down to Turkey across Iraq ,etc.
Nice that you enjoyed your flight, but as a long-time SAS Diamond (black card, *G) holder I’m surprised by your praise. I’ve flown with SK business well over 100 long-haul flights and had maybe 3-5 really good ones. The food is usually a let-down, the service so-so and the the seat just okay. I do my best to only redeem points on other Star Alliance carriers, and will surely miss them post the transition to SkyTeam (or, as the Swedish business press called them, ”SkräpTeam”, rougly translated to ”CrapTeam”) 🙁
I used to think that Sky Team wasn’t that great vs Star Alliance (long time UA 1K 1MM) but since I’ve made it my primary alliance I’ve been impressed. AF service is excellent. Planes are in good shape. I’ve found lounges aren’t overcrowded the way that for example a UA Polaris lounge is at IAD (insane!). Virgin Atlantic is now a member and SAS will soon be joining. Hard to fly a Star Alliance carrier that isn’t Lufthansa Group (no thanks!) or UA.
Star Alliance is the best alliance out there, simply by virtue of having lots of members which fly all over the world. Its coverage is simply phenomenal.
However, SkyTeam isn’t all that bad either. Its members include a number of rather underappreciated carriers such as AM, Garuda, MEA, KE, and UX- they may not win lots of awards, but they go to quite a few places and do tend to offer reliable service and decent value.
What I find pathetic is the comments in the blogosphere (OMAAT is particularly bad for this, but definitely not alone) which suggest that SkyTeam is somehow worse than the comedy alliance that’s oneworld (which is currently courting the illustrious MIAT and Rwandair and whose southernmost hubs in the entire Western hemisphere are CMN and MIA), only because the latter offers ‘first class’ lounge access to status holders (whereby BA and QR designate fake F lounges just for elites and send their F pax to a proper F lounge). I suppose that when you’re an influencer and/or credit card salesperson, you don’t worry about actual useful stuff such as extra baggage allowance for all status holders on every fare of every airline.
I was thinking of KQ rather than their fellow SkyTeam member KE, which obviously is an airline with a very solid (and well-deserved) reputation.
Despite — or maybe because of — having the French royal family, Sweden seems to long have had a thing for looking up to Germany and what the German big whigs do.
That the Swedish popular press would support Lufthansa and Star Alliance begs a reassessment. While SAS is in Star Alliance it is about as cheap as it goes with service in economy class on a legacy major. And Star gave up on a free checked bag for all lounge-entitled elites. And I say this as someone who dislikes SkyTeam’s lounge access restrictions, as it means going without Skyteam-based lounge access on the domestic routes of greatest relevance to me when flying SkyTeam — domestic US flights when not in conjunction with a same-day international flight.
The SkyTeam baggage rules are even better than that as the checked bag isn’t restricted to top-level Elite Plus members but is also offered to Elite ones (silver tier in most programmes), together with business class check in.
Can we use the word Vermin like Trump?