The SAS crisis and the pilots: Today is the last day of negotiations and no solution is in sight at the moment.

Monday is likely to be a turning point in the negotiations between the parties involved in the Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) dispute. According to SAS chief negotiator Marianne Hernes, speaking in Stockholm on Monday morning, Monday is expected to be the final day of negotiations. It remains unclear whether the negotiations will conclude with an agreement and an end to the pilots' strike. Hernes told the media, "Now that [the negotiations] have gone on for so long, you have to realize at some point as a negotiator that the battle has been lost. That's enough for today." She indicated that either an agreement will be reached or the negotiations will be declared over without one. The negotiations were suspended without an agreement on Sunday night after the parties had been negotiating for approximately 40 hours. They resumed on Monday morning around 9:00 AM.

Maria Hernes believes this is because SAS cannot continue to suffer the daily financial losses the company is incurring. According to her, the continuation of the strike, which entered its fifteenth day on Monday, is "irresponsible." Last week, SAS announced that the strike would cost the company between 70 and 90 million Danish kroner each day, and therefore, SAS called for an agreement as soon as possible. Hernes also explained that an agreement between the pilots and SAS management requires the consent and approval of the investors. Currently, Hernes has no idea what might happen if a solution is not reached by Monday.

The fate of stranded passengers who had booked return flights on SAS was not addressed if no agreement was reached today, and Marianne Hernes did not answer whether SAS would go into bankruptcy in that case.

Overview of the dispute
In February, SAS introduced its major savings plan, “SAS Forward,” which was supposed to save 5.3 billion Danish kroner annually. Certain groups of employees, including pilots, were to contribute. When SAS laid off about half of its pilots during the coronavirus pandemic, it was with a re-employment agreement. This is part of the reason why pilots have now been negotiating with SAS for more than eight months. However, SAS has hired new pilots under agreements with different terms at its subsidiaries, SAS Link and SAS Connect. Since July 4, up to 900 pilots from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have gone on strike, causing the cancellation of about half of SAS’s daily departures.

The day after the strike began, SAS filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States in what is called “Chapter 11,” which would help SAS by implementing a major austerity policy and also help put pressure on some of the company’s creditors to waive the debt.