SAS MAKING ‘PRIORITY’ FLIGHTS TO SVALBARD: Airline will offer Oslo-Longyearbyen flights on Monday and Tuesday despite strike

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Scandinavian Airlines, which has caused chaos across Europe by cancelling flights affecting tens of thousands of travellers since Friday, announced it will use its limited pilots to make “priority” flights between Oslo and Longyearbyen on Monday and Tuesday.

“Today we are on top priority,” Sølvi Jacobsen, head of Widerøe Ground Service, told Svalbardposten. “I am very pleased with that.”

Both flights are scheduled to arrive in Longyearbyen at 2 p.m. and depart for Oslo at 2:45 p.m.

Jacobsen said local officials are trying to arrange an SAS flight on Wednesday as well.

The strike severely disrupted travelers coming to Longyearbyen for Saturday’s Svalbard Skimaraton, with about 100 of the roughly 800 participants unable to come and many others forced to scramble to rebook flights on Norwegian Air at the last moment. Numerous participants are also stuck in Longyearbyen for several days after the race, with most unable to book seats on Norwegian for Oslo flights until at least Wednesday once the SAS strike started.

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Mark Sabbatini

I'm a professional transient living on a tiny Norwegian island next door to the North Pole, where once a week (or thereabouts) I pollute our extreme and pristine environment with paper fishwrappers decorated with seemingly random letters that would cause a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters to die of humiliation. Such is the wisdom one acquires after more than 25 years in the world's second-least-respected occupation, much of it roaming the seven continents in search of jazz, unrecognizable street food and escorts I f****d with by insisting they give me the platonic tours of their cities promised in their ads. But it turns out this tiny group of islands known as Svalbard is my True Love and, generous contributions from you willing, I'll keep littering until they dig my body out when my climate-change-deformed apartment collapses or they exile my penniless ass because I'm not even worthy of washing your dirty dishes.

marksabbatini@yahoo.com

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