Introduction

You know how the saying “four seasons in a day” is used to express the kind of changeable weather that occurs during the transition from one season to the next? In Trondheim I think that saying needs a bit of tweaking to account for the fact that it’s more a case of “four seasons in twenty minutes”. It’s crazy, the change from sunny to rain and wind to snow and back to sunny has me reeling in a state of stupefied confusion.

I exit the tower facility at 16h55 and walk through the car park to the terminal building. Arrivals are on ground floor, whereas departures are one level up.

Check-In

SAS is clearly a very process driven operation in which they have attempted to bring down costs by minimizing the number of touch points for passengers to interact with passengers. Check-in for SAS domestic flights is at the self-service machines, where you print your own tag and boarding card before over to the baggage drop counter.

As I knew I might be cutting it a bit fine, I purchased a fast track pass when I checked in online, as I wasn’t convinced that the integration of SAS into FlyingBlue had already progresses far enough to give me fast track access with my SkyPriority status.

Airside/Boarding

By the time I’m airside, it’s 17h13. Boarding is expected to start in seven minutes, although the inbound is no expected to land until 17h17. There is no lounge in Trondheim, but that’s okay too. I won’t be here for long. Besides, the views of the outside are too good to be missed.

As expected, the aircraft pulls onto its stand at gate 35 at 17h20. Boarding is postponed slightly to begin at 17h35.

The Cabin & Seat

Flying domestic with SAS is a lot like taking the bus. And I guess that’s not even that far from the truth, owing to the county’s considerable length and its rocky coastline. The flight from Trondheim to Oslo is 35 minutes. By train it’s 12 hours.

In any case, the cabin looks a bit messy and untidy. But that’s neither here nor there and nobody seems bothered by it. All I’m interested in, is that I’m seated on the emergency exit on row 11, so I can stretch my legs.

The Cabin Crew & Service

The cabin crew are quite senior and very professional. Before departure, the two exit rows get a separate safety briefing which is done throughly and clearly. Other than that, I have zero interaction with the crew owing to the fact that there’s no service at all in standard Economy Class. But again, the flight is only 35 minutes. We only spend about eight minutes in the cruise before we start descending again.

Arrival in Oslo

At least the weather is much better in Oslo than it was in Trondheim. The sun is even out! We land and then make a brief taxi to our stand at the domestic pier.

As we exit the airbridge, passengers are segregated. Arriving passengers with Oslo as their destination go up one floor, whereas connecting passengers continue straight ahead, to be ejected directly airside without having to go through security again

Conclusion

There isn’t really anything much to say about this experience with SAS. The flight was hardly long enough for that. Since joining SkyTeam, SAS has announced the reintroduction of a Business Class product on shorthaul. It’ll be interesting to see how they do that without making their costs skyrocket.