{"id":33824,"date":"2026-01-12T18:43:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T18:43:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/?p=33824"},"modified":"2026-01-12T18:43:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T18:43:22","slug":"sas-named-european-airline-of-the-year-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/international-news\/sas-named-european-airline-of-the-year-2026\/%20","title":{"rendered":"SAS Named \u201cEuropean Airline of the Year 2026\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flysas.com\/\">SAS<\/a> has been named \u201cEuropean Airline of the Year 2026\u201d at the Grand Travel Awards. The award is regarded as one of the most prestigious recognitions in the Norwegian travel industry and is based on votes from employees in travel agencies and other travel trade professionals. The Grand Travel Awards has been held annually since 1995, and winners are chosen by the industry itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>SAS was selected from a strong field of nominated airlines, including KLM, Air France, Lufthansa, Norwegian, Icelandair, LOT Polish Airlines and Finnair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThis award is a true tribute to the dedication, professionalism and resilience shown by our colleagues across the entire organization,\u201d says Edward Fotheringham, VP Global Sales at SAS. \u201cOver the past few years, we have rebuilt our company step by step \u2013 improving reliability, strengthening our product and putting our customers firmly back at the center of everything we do. Being named European Airline of the Year shows that the industry recognizes both our progress and our direction. And while we are incredibly proud today, we also know that there is much more to come.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>More than 300 guests from across the travel industry attended the award ceremony in Oslo, organized by Travel News. The awards reflect the preferences of customers and partners within both leisure and business travel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The recognition reflects SAS\u2019 progress in its ongoing transformation. Punctuality has improved significantly, and customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Score continue to rise strongly. The customer offering has also been strengthened through the return of Business Class, expanded lounge access, the launch of several new routes, and the upcoming installation of free high-speed, low-latency WiFi across the entire fleet, powered by Starlink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>SAS was represented at the ceremony by Edward Fotheringham, VP Global Sales, Head of Press \u00d8ystein Schmidt and Bj\u00f8rn Erik Barman-Jenssen, VP Ground ARN &amp; OSL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SAS has been named \u201cEuropean Airline of the Year 2026\u201d at the Grand Travel Awards. The award is regarded as one of the most prestigious recognitions in the Norwegian travel industry and is based on votes from employees in travel agencies and other travel trade professionals. The Grand Travel Awards has been held annually since [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":33825,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[143,114],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-airlines","category-international-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/SAS.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33824"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33826,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33824\/revisions\/33826"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}