Mini Trip Report: SAS A330-343 from Chicago-O'Hare to Stockholm-Arlanda in SAS Plus

A nice summer transatlantic flight from Chicago to Stockholm, flying in SAS's premium economy cabin. This video combines the takeoff and landing videos from the flight, along with some still shots of the cabin interior and in-flight service. My original vision was to do a time lapse of all of my flights on this trip, so that I could watch my entire journey from the western US to Sweden and Finland. However, because our routing took us really far north and because of the time of year, it was light outside for the entire overnight flight, so I had to keep my window closed for most of the flight in order to keep the cabin dark.

Our flight started out with a bit of a delay; the aircraft got stuck in Newark the day before due to an emergency on one of the runways with a United 757-200.  I was also a little disappointed that the window was fogged-up for this flight, but it didn't affect the footage too badly. We had very long and slow taxi for takeoff in Chicago, but that gave me a chance to watch other planes taking off while we waited. The flight itself was pretty smooth the whole time, even with a thick layer of clouds over Chicago, and the A330 was very graceful on both takeoff and landing. Our routing took us to the north-northeast at first, before flying over Greenland and north of Iceland, making landfall near Kristiansund, Norway and continuing in a southeast direction towards Stockholm. We arrived early in the morning but well after sunrise, and had time nice views of the area around the airport during our approach. Landing on Runway 26 put us right outside our gate, so we had a much shorter taxi in Stockholm than we did in Chicago.

Overall, I really enjoyed flying in SAS Plus, but I wasn't as impressed with it as I have been by other long-haul Premium Economy products. The hard product was good; the seat was comfortable, had plenty of room, and a nice footrest, and the large-screen entertainment system worked well and had a lot of good options to make the time pass by. The soft product was where I thought it was lacking a little, mostly with the catering. The meals were the same as regular economy class, except with real dining ware instead of plastic, and although it wasn't bad, it didn't really set the experience apart from SAS Go. The new SAS long-haul cabins are very nice, with dark gray seats and a nicely-contrasted light birchwood-look cabin divider. The mood lighting was also very appreciated on this flight, making up for the lack of a real nighttime.

If you want to watch the individual takeoff and landing videos from this flight, you can find them here:
Takeoff - SAS A330-343 Long Taxi & Takeoff from...
Landing - SAS A330-343 Landing at Stockholm-Arl...

Date: June 16-17, 2019
Airline: SAS Scandinavian Airlines
Flight: SK946
Departure: Chicago-O'Hare Int'l Airport (KORD/ORD)
Arrival: Stockholm Arlanda Airport (ESSA/ARN)
Aircraft: A330-343
Registration: LN-RKR
Seat: 24A (SAS Plus)
Camera: GoPro Hero 4 Silver