News: SAS SkyTeam launch date confirmed, Edinburgh twilight check-in extended

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• BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

  30 Apr30 April 07:28

  It let me register for the Accor / ALL offer and I isn’t get the email either.

• Andrew. says:

  30 Apr30 April 08:14

  Flew out of EDI yesterday. The “Fast Track” lane had the new leave-in-the-bag scanner and the cowboy stance detector, I was through very quickly, but seemed to be more bags waiting for secondary check than normal.

  (The other channels still had the heritage equipment.)

• Swifty says:

  30 Apr30 April 08:21

  Accor book and stay 26-28th may, bit tight

  • Rob says:

    30 Apr30 April 08:25

    That’s not what it says ….

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    30 Apr30 April 08:28

    The former is the book by date. The latter the last stay by date.

• ankomonkey says:

  30 Apr30 April 09:44

  For the Accor offer, do we think staying the night of 28th May and checking out on the 29th would do? The ts&cs are unclear to me.

• Thaliasilje says:

  30 Apr30 April 09:47

  Star Alliance to SkyTeam is such a downgrade in terms of alliance.

  • Bernard says:

    30 Apr30 April 10:01

    Haha you mean Skycr@p?

    • Throwawayname says:

      30 Apr30 April 10:38

      I don’t get the hate for Skyteam, *A obviously has the best coverage but its Elite (Flying Blue Silver or equivalent) status level is the best in the business as you get additional luggage on ALL fares across the alliance as well as business class check in. In other words, it’s the ideal back up status for anyone who does a fair amount of short haul travel and is unable/unwilling to buy premium tickets for short flights.

      • Throwawayname says:

        30 Apr30 April 10:57

        Being a Star Alliance Gold member looks great on paper and works well 70% of the time, but it can be rather frustrating when you find out that you can’t even buy a ticket with luggage allowance for a complex itinerary and your status won’t give you anything extra, or when there’s no access to a contract lounge, or when you cannot guest someone into the lounge because they fly the same airline but to a different destination, or when you buy a Lufthansa flight and they put you on a subsidiary where no status benefits are recognised etc. I haven’t come across any of those on ST.

        • Jonathan says:

          30 Apr30 April 11:37

          I don’t know about other reader’s experience, Lufthansa don’t exactly try to please customers, although there’s plenty of praise about the likes of Swiss and Austrian.

        • His Holyness says:

          30 Apr30 April 14:36

          So you don’t fly very much. The named airline in this article, SAS, does NOT pay for contract lounges.

  • Jonathan says:

    30 Apr30 April 11:34

    It’s somewhat strange that Star Alliance manage to get the most of SkyTrax’s 5 star airlines, which is a very tough category to get into.

    I do find it rather weird that OneWorld doesn’t have any China based airlines, the closest is Cathay Pacific, although a few days ago I read that they might be forced to move from OW as Air China (Star Alliance) looks to increase their stake in CX.
    An ideal candidate for OneWorld would be Hainan Airlines (5 star by SkyTrax). It does half beggar belief that China Southern took several years to leave SkyTeam after China Eastern (one of their key rivals) joined…

    If Hainan Airlines were to join any of the three groups, it’d be ideal for points earning and redemption opportunities, since minus their own program, the only options are Alaska Airlines, Virgin Australia and Etihad, minus the latter (but only to less limited extent, very few HfP readers use these programs, being discussed here on HfP, apart from Etihad Guest which gets mentioned occasionally, the other two are only mentioned on extremely rare occasions…

    It’d be interesting to know if OneWorld are seeking a Chinese carrier, if they are, they don’t seem in too much of a rush

    • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

      30 Apr30 April 12:36

      Getting a 5* rating from that particuilar review site isn’t as hard as you think it is.

      Besides any credibility it had vanished when in 2017 it rated an airline 5* for a seat that only actually had its first passenger sit in in late 2023

      • His Holyness says:

        30 Apr30 April 16:52

        Which airline is that?

        • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

          30 Apr30 April 20:20

          https://www.headforpoints.com/2023/03/01/lufthansa-unveils-new-allegris-first-class-cabin/

        • His Holyness says:

          30 Apr30 April 20:28

          Allegris won’t have its first passengers until May.

  • NorskSaint says:

    30 Apr30 April 17:01

    As a SAS Diamond, it will be interesting to see the changes. Used the equivalent 241 Amex voucher for Ethiopian and Turkish so will miss the breadth of airlines. Not a fan of Schiphol or CDG and seems they will become my new hubs.

    Got used to the quirks of SAS, no lounges in random places like BCN if flying with SAS… SAS plus is dire and i can’t stand it when you get an upgrade at the gate, losing an emergency exit seat and ending up with less leg room and some terrible snack food.

    Cautiously optimistic as to what changes AF/KLM will make eventually. I do wish IAG had snapped it up, although not sure I could face LHR connections again I do not miss those purple signs…!

    • Bernard says:

      1 May1 May 18:38

      As an SAS Diamond thank goodness IAG got nowhere near it. Walsh and Cruz trashed BA, Cruz messed up Vueling so badly it’s taken years to recover. They’d have gutted SAS and utterly failed to understand Scandi employment laws.
      At least with AF, one partner will be on strike far more than SAS.
      Still very odd that Lufthansa ignored a highly wealthy business travel region to mess around with ITA – which the EU has rightly blocked and to ho and cosy up the CCP Airways at Air China, which is a ghastly airline.
      Shame skyteam has many more cr-ppy Chinese airlines in it.

• Maples says:

  30 Apr30 April 11:01

  There’s no space between “confirmed,1000” in the title. Madness!

  • Rob says:

    30 Apr30 April 11:40

    Sloppy, apologies 🙂 I moved SkyTeam to the front and the cut and paste messed up.

• a9504477 says:

  30 Apr30 April 12:34

  How do i know if i could register for the Accor promotion. When following the link i get to a page with “More information” about the offer but nothing saying i got registered.

  • Rob says:

    30 Apr30 April 13:11

    Really? If you logged in and click ‘Register’ that bar will go green and you’ll get a ‘registered’ message. You won’t see the registration button again if you are logged in and return to the page.

• BP says:

  30 Apr30 April 13:04

  I used the twilight check-in the last time we had an early morning Ryanair flight. It worked well but I was getting inconsistent messages from the check-in staff about tags for a gate-checked buggy. This needs to be tagged at check-in but the staff were telling me it would get done at the gate – fortunately one check-in staff member knew the process and done it. It was worthwhile for an extra hour in bed (EDI queues are long in the morning!!) and fast-track to the plane with tired kids. The Edinburgh airport page states that only the lead passenger can do the twilight check-in but Ryanair didn’t care as long as I had passports for the entire group.

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