Trip Report: SAS Copenhagen to New York (CPH

There are 4 engines!

Intro

This is the return leg of my Newark to Berlin flight on SAS. My review of the inbound leg is here. I was expecting an A330 with the new Business Class configuration like the one I'd flown out on... But then I walked down the jetway and noticed the plane had 4 engines, not 2. Since it was still a single-decker plane, I knew we'd had an equipment swap to an A340. This also explained why they'd been making announcements at the gate about there being no Wi-Fi on today's flight. I didn't mind, since I'm a plane nerd and I hadn't been on an A340 in years.

Pros

Friendly service
Good food
SAS still earns United partner miles based on distance, not dollars (net gain: 7000 miles!)

Cons

Chaotic boarding procedure
Secured gate means you're trapped inside a small area until the plane boards
Our A340 didn't have upgraded interiors so we had an older plane with the previous-gen seats

How I did it

In early May, I was pricing out flights to Germany for this particular week in June and spotted this flight for $2100 USD. SAS flights still earn United miles based on the distance of the flight, not the cost of the ticket, so I earned 13,000 United miles for this flight (versus 6,000 if this ticket had been for a United-operated flight). In addition, I'll earn another 6,000 Chase points for using my Reserve card with the 3x airfare bonus. All told, I earned about $380 worth of points for this flight.

Boarding

Just like the flight here, boarding started with a single call for Business Class and all Elites. This is a fairly large group but since we'd already pre-screened to enter the secured gate area, we didn't have the bottleneck of each person needing to scan their boarding passes.

The Business cabin was full and quite a few people seemed amused at the "museum piece" we were flying on. SAS's interiors were updated only very recently so I'm a bit surprised by people's reactions.

Boarding gate was a secure holding area

Old A340 seats

my seat

Seat controls

Legroom

Food

The trip started out with a lot of turbulence but that's fairly normal. Once we were airborne menus, warm nuts, and drinks came out.

The service was being provided by on FA in a normal uniform and another in a chef's coat. There was a similar pair in each aisle. A basket full of warm bread was passed and then the appetizer came out. I chose the tapas. The chef made a salad for me to go with it.

For my main, I had the veal shank and it was ok. The truffle pasta was probably the best part. I'd just read this article about airline food and it definitely made me think about how my food had been prepared. Like the texture of the meat was great but the pasta wasn't sauced so it had dried out quite a bit.

For dessert i had rhubarb cake and a side of Mackmyra Swedish whisky - very tasty. After that I had no trouble falling asleep in my seat and woke up in time for the pre-arrival lunch. Landing cards were handed out and the rest of the trip was on-time and uneventful.