SAS to add extra flights to its three routes out of Dublin

Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) is stepping up its services from Dublin Airport next year by adding extra flights to its three routes to and from the Irish gateway.

The airline will add extra flights on its three services from Dublin, Copenhagen in Denmark, Oslo in Norway and Stockholm in Sweden from next year.

Overall, it will have 11 per cent more seats available on its services. Within that, it is boosting space on the Oslo route by 16 per cent, and adding 9 per cent more seats on the other two flights.

Dublin Airport managing director Vincent Harrison welcomed the news at the weekend.

“SAS is one of our oldest European customers and its decision to significantly expand capacity on all three of its existing routes from Dublin is good news for business and leisure travellers,” he said.

The Scandinavian carrier is a long-standing customer of the airport. It began flying there in April 1966 and has carried more than 4.5 million travellers on three routes from Dublin since then.

The news follows the announcement earlier this week that SAS intends launching a twice-weekly service to Stockholm from Shannon next August that will run until the following October.

Period of expansion

The Dublin Airport owner, State company Dublin Airport Authority (DAA), pointed out it was the fifth expansion announced by an overseas airline in the past three weeks.

Air France KLM low-cost offshoot Transavia will operate a new Dublin-Munich service next summer while KLM itself intends doubling its proposed Amsterdam flights.

US airline Delta plans a new service to Boston, adding to its New York and Atlanta routes. Etihad is returning to operating its year-round double-daily service to Abu Dhabi from next April. A shortage of suitable craft prompted it to cut back to once-a-day.

More than 21.4 million people travelled through Dublin Airport in the first nine months of the year, 12 per cent more than in the same period in 2015.

The growth indicates it is likely to exceed the record set last year, when passenger numbers hit 25 million.