Next week — on August 20 — SAS is launching new all-business class service between Houston and Stavanger, Norway operated by Privatair 6 days a week (every day except Saturdays).
The flight will be on a 737 configured with 44 seats.
Houston is already the number one business destination SAS operates, based on customer surveys, with nearly four-fifths of travel between Scandinavia and the US energy hub being business-related.
Bonusfeber has details of the offer and fortunately Google Chrome does a nice job translating.
Even better, it pointed me to the offer itself in English on SAS’ website.
Register by August 28 and fly between August 20 and October 31, and then:
- one roundtrip gives you EuroBonus Gold status
- two roundtrips gives you EuroBonus Diamond status
EuroBonus Gold is Star Alliance Gold which means lounge access and priority service across Star Alliance airlines like United.
Diamond is top tier status — and if you earn Diamond status in EuroBonus, they let you give away the Gold you earned earlier. Diamond usually requires 100 one-way flights with SAS or Wideroe or 100,000 ‘Basic points’ with SAS, Wideroe and Star Alliance airlines.
Of course these are hardly mileage-runnable flights, since they’re all business class.
And separately, while new routes are often fertile ground for award space, I haven’t found much award space on this one. They’re clearly protecting this new product hoping to sell oil executives traveling between the two regions on the convenience.
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Just doing a quick check it looks like for less than $3k you can do a round trip during this window so that’s not bad for a small business class plane and status.
Guess I’m just suggesting that I wouldn’t take a flight I didn’t need, and spend the cash, to get Star Alliance Gold.
But for someone who would fly this route, it’s a helluva deal!
Seeing $2600 all in RT. If somebody wants to take a late summer trip to Scandinavia, or maybe the long way to elsewhere in europe by adding an extra leg, not a bad deal at all with a nice bonus thrown in.
One round trip of about that length in business on pretty much any star alliance airline gets you Aegean gold status, since they bonus premium cabin travel well. I did an RT LAX-ZRH and got some 24k miles for it.
Looks like slanted seats. See the slideshow for Privatair’s 44-seat 737 here: http://privatair.com/aircraft/boeing-737-700-0
I got SAS gold as tam left star alliance. Their programmme is awsome, as Gold I can give a silver card to a relative and the status is valid for 2 full years (for both me and my silver card nomenee)
How long is the Gold status good for.
I was able to price it at $2357, 10/16/2014-10/30/2014. That’s a super deal.
I actually need to be in Athens during that time. I’d get this ticket if I can figure out an easy way to get to Athens from Stavanger. Anything to see in Stavanger?
Amazing given that they were teetering on insolvency not long ago. Their intra Europe product ain’t much to speak about, but apparently they will be getting new interors soon on their transcons.
@Al, I spent a few days in Stavanger back a few years ago, it was pretty nice, and they have an awesome Oil Museum if you’re into science and engineering and whatnot (http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g190511-d317602-Reviews-Norwegian_Petroleum_Museum-Stavanger_Stavanger_Municipality_Rogaland_Western_Norwa.html). Certainly enough to do for a few days on a stopover.
Why not just credit to aegean (A3) anyway? IAH-SVG is almost 5k one way, so just need to find that last 150 miles.
if you book in Economy: A, J, Y, S, B, P or Biz: C, D, Z its 200% accural. And that freaking status lasts forever (until they revise it).
Tickets from Stavanger to many European cities on SAS are quite inexpensive, e.g., $300 economy between Stavanger and Athens. But it doesn’t price between Houston and Athens. It means I have to buy 2 tickets separately.
Still this is a good inexpensive option for flying transatlantic in biz class.