SAS stops flying to Kiruna - municipality costs a week's traffic

The Corona crisis hits hard on SAS, which, after all, promised to "fly to Umeå, Luleå and Kiruna" on commercial grounds.

But now new directives for the destination Kiruna have come.

The municipal management has been told that the company will stop flying from Monday because it is not commercially defensible.

The message broke down as a bomb in Kiruna City Hall and Gunnar Selberg (C) Municipal Council started to work with a quick crisis solution that is now here.

- Kiruna Municipality goes in and guarantees a week's flights to and from Kiruna and 40 seats per trip. It will cost the municipality SEK 180,000 according to my calculations, but the alternative is not to have air traffic from Kiruna and there is not. Then we have to find a long-term sustainable solution where the state takes a different responsibility compared to today, says Gunnar Selberg.

He believes that a solution to air traffic could be ready next week.

- This is serious, but we have bought ourselves a week to find a solution and I think we will succeed, says Gunnar Selberg

The regional council Nils-Olov Lindfors (C) is very upset by SAS's message about the Kiruna traffic.

- I'm really surprised at the message that Kiruna Municipality has received and we need to find a solution as soon as possible. Among other things, we will talk to the responsible minister, Tomas Eneroth. This is not the case. This is a disaster and the state should take some kind of ownership responsibility, he says.

SVT News Norrbotten has been in contact with SAS press chief Freja Annamatz, but she chose not to comment on the issue right now.