John Ivar Kristensen lives in Eidsvoll, but has a cabin by Lakselv in Finnmark. He and his family travel there several times during the year. Last week he was supposed to book a plane ticket from Lakselv to Oslo towards the end of September. He used a travel search engine where a direct route with SAS costs NOK 2,200. But after a while, Kristensen got a surprise. He found the same trip to the capital for just under NOK 800. The trick was that this journey had Copenhagen as its final destination. The journey started with the same scheduled flight Lakselv-Oslo, and then on to Denmark’s capital. John Ivar Kristensen is puzzled by the price difference on plane tickets from the same departure point. Photo: Privat – You can of course buy a ticket all the way to Copenhagen and get off in Oslo, but then you can’t check in your luggage, says Kristensen since the luggage had then been sent to Copenhagen. Kristensen did not know this “trick” before. That is why he was surprised by the price difference between the flight to Oslo and all the way to Copenhagen from the same place. – It’s a bit strange, but I’m not complaining about being able to fly all the way to Copenhagen for NOK 790. John Ivar has been put off by how much the plane tickets from Lakselv to Copenhagen cost. The journey consists of two flights: Lakselv-Oslo which takes off at 12:25, and Oslo-Copenhagen. Photo: Skjermdump, 15/09/2022 21:56 If you buy a ticket from Lakselv to Oslo as your final destination, you will pay almost twice as much. Even if we then take the same plane that takes off from Lakselv at 12.25. Believes that SAS is exploiting its monopoly situation Kristensen believes that this case is related to the fact that the only direct route from Lakselv to Oslo is operated by SAS. In 2020, the airline won a tender for direct flights from the capital to Lakselv as part of the Norwegian Armed Forces’ modernization in Finnmark. – The way I see it, only SAS uses its monopoly situation on this route to the full and rips off the local population for what they can. Kristensen is puzzled as to what enables the airline to charge higher ticket prices to Oslo than to a city abroad. – Is the agreement with the Norwegian Armed Forces so good that they can afford to fly with empty seats? Or is the deal so bad that they have to fleece the local population to make a profit? It was in April 2020 that SAS started direct flights from Lakselv to Oslo. More examples news has carried out several similar searches that Kristensen has done. Is it really the case that a long-haul flight to Norway will be cheaper if the trip is made into an international trip with a stopover in Oslo? Yes, by searching for travel on a random Monday a month ahead, such tickets appear. For example, a journey Stockholm-Alta on 26 September will cost a minimum of NOK 1,330, according to the SAS search engine. The trip from Sweden requires a stopover and a change of plane in Oslo. But if you want to buy a ticket Oslo-Alta on the same day with the same flight, the minimum price is NOK 1,749. If you want to travel from Bardufoss to Berlin on 26 September, it will cost NOK 1,094 with a change of flight in Oslo. But if you buy tickets on the same flight Bardufoss-Oslo, the price increases by NOK 800. Also at Bardufoss, SAS won the Norwegian Defense Forces’ tender in 2019 to deliver flight connections for defense personnel. There are three flights from Bardufoss to Oslo on weekdays. A single ticket will then cost around NOK 2,000. Photo: SKJERMDUMP, 15/09/2022 22:26 But if you are going from Berdufoss to Berlin, the price drops quite quickly. The picture shows the two cheapest of several airline tickets offered for this route on the SAS website. Usual practice Tonje Sund, head of press at the Norwegian SAS department, replies to news that, for reasons of competition, she cannot go into detail about routes and market areas. – Airline prices are determined by where and when you are going to travel and change dynamically in line with supply and demand. There will therefore be certain periods when you can find cheaper trips to a city other than Oslo, explains Sund. Tonje Sund, press manager for SAS Norway, says that it is supply and demand that govern airline ticket prices at the company. She writes that these changes apply to the entire SAS flight network and not to any particular cities. She says that such price differences can also occur with other airlines around the world. Regarding the tenders SAS has with the Norwegian Armed Forces, Sund believes that they do not affect ticket prices. – Both economically and environmentally, it is important to have a high filling rate on the planes. It applies to all departures and all destinations, and is not a unique problem for SAS either. But airlines don’t like defectors. – According to the ticket rules, it is not allowed to jump off at the stopover. If passengers do this, the return journey can be canceled in accordance with EU rules. Sund writes that SAS does not see this as a widespread phenomenon. – But in the extreme, breaking the ticket rules can have consequences for the traveller, writes Sund. Complex field Elisabeth Carina Syversen, communications manager for travel agency Berg-Hansen, says that air ticket prices are a rather complex field where many things can appear illogical to customers during a price search. – Every flight consists of many different price categories. The airlines control at all times how many seats they sell at what price on various routes. It is both about concrete sales and forecasts, she writes in an e-mail to news. Regarding the price difference that John Ivar Kristensen has discovered, she believes that the reason may lie in the fact that there are more available seats on the Oslo-Copenhagen flight than Lakselv-Oslo. – In addition, it is the case that on regular trips abroad there is no VAT if the stopover is less than 24 hours in Oslo. This can also have an impact on the final price, writes Syversen.
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