SAS has announced that it will not outsource ground handling at Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm, though it has agreed to finalise negotiations to transfer the Ground Handling line stations at Gothenburg and Malmö to Aviator Airport Alliance Europe AB (Aviator).
The transfer of ground operations at these two Scandinavian airports are in line with what SAS has done at other stations in Scandinavia and worldwide.
SAS says that efficiencies from a “large-scale” streaming program within the SAS Ground Handling organisation at the airline’s main airports, coupled with the outsourcing of the majority of ground handling services elsewhere, have reduced costs by approximately 300 million Swedish Kroner over the past two years.
“SAS and Aviator have concluded that the commercial criteria do not exist to warrant a takeover of ground handling at the main airports. SAS digitalisation strategy will enable further streamlining and customer improvements to be made within the sphere of ground operations, which the company considers can be best achieved by itself,” the airline states.
Negotiations with Aviator for services at Malmö and Gothenburg should be finalised this summer.