With much fanfare, a turret salute from SEA airport firefighters, and plenty of pastries, SAS Scandinavian Airlines resumed it’s Copenhagen to Seattle service after a sixteen-year hiatus using Airbus A350s on the route.
SAS has a long history in Seattle, having inaugurated service to Europe back in 1966, becoming the first carrier to directly serve the Pacific Northwest from the Continent. The Port of Seattle had a publication named the “reporter,” which ran a three-page cover article about the new service in the October 1, 1966 issue.
That service ran from 1966 to 2009, when it stopped due to a downturn in passenger traffic due to the global recession.
Therefore, the May 21, 2025 return was something of a triumph for the airline. The event felt buoyant, like a genuine celebration.
Seattle is SAS’ 11th destination in North America, boosting Copenhagen Airport’s role as a hub for transatlantic travel. The route will be operated using an Airbus A350. From CPH, SAS offers connections to 39 European cities, including Berlin, Zurich, Milan, and Helsinki.
On the way out to the ramp at SEA to photograph the first flight’s arrival, I sat next to an SAS marketing person in the van. I made a joke about the inaugural departure, saying they seldom depart on time because of the festivites. “Oh, it will depart on time,” she said, with northern-European sternness, reminding me that SAS consistently wins awards for being the most on-time airline.
So, of course I looked it up. In 2025, SAS was named Europe’s most punctual airline and second in the world (Saudia placed first) by Cirium aviation analytics, with an on-time performance of 91.92 percent.
In fact, the inaugural arrival was early, so we missed being able to photograph the landing, but we did get to enjoy a thorough soaking from the water-cannon salute near the gate.
At SEA, the winds trend from either the southwest or north. This particular day, it shifted out of the west, giving everyone on the ramp a good dousing from the water cannons. My cameras needed a bath anyway, and were none the worse for the experience.
“Seattle is more than just a new destination for us. It is a return to a city with historic ties to Scandinavia and growing importance for business and tourism. We are proud to reopen this connection and offer our customers even greater reach across the Atlantic,” said SAS President & CEO Anko van der Werff.
The Seattle route is part of SAS’ wider network expansion, which also includes new destinations including Nuuk, Greenland, and Seoul, South Korea, both set to begin in 2025.
The route will be flown five times per week year-round, with CPH-SEA flying as SK937, and SEA-CPH as SK938.
It’s great to see another European airline at SEA, and the new service will provide even more options for travelers from the Pacific Northwest.
It’s sort of odd not to mention anything about SEA being a Delta hub and SAS’s recent move from the Star Alliance to SkyTeam.
Thanks for reading! That’s a great suggestion; I’ll see if I can get some more details for the article.
Great to see SAS back in SEA. They were the original “Over the Pole” airline. I think you have a typo, however, when you say “six-year hiatus”. I think it should be “sixteen-year hiatus”.
Thanks for reading, and for noticing. Typo has been fixed!
I have fond avgeek memories from you young adulthood when I worked the ramp at SEA inthe late 70’s and early 80’s. Those SAS DC-8s and DC-10s with exotic viking names intrigued me. I was always amazed that they had flown over the frozen arctic for 9 hours from tiny Denmark and touched down here in my hometown. At the time there were only two direct flights to Europe from SEA; either Pan Am to LHR and SAS to CPH. Occasionally SAS had another flight to GOT. Otherwise you had to connect in ORD or JFK. Sometimes I’d go to the observation area at international arrivals just to eyeball the passengers as they passed through customs, wondering what their stories were.
Thanks for sharing that memory!
Did you know that SEA has a day-pass program which allows you to access the secure side of the airport without needing an airline ticket? It’s a lot of fun for we avgeeks, and you can relive those memories of watching passengers and guessing their stories, or watching the planes.
Here’s the link if you’re curious: https://www.portseattle.org/page/sea-visitor-pass-program