SAS was on brink of bankruptcy

Stockholm: A top executive at Scandinavia’s tri-nation airline SAS says the carrier was only days away from bankruptcy, should last month’s brutal savings plan not have been approved by the company’s pilot and cabin crews.

In an interview with Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter on Saturday, Deputy Chairman Jacob Wallenberg says the company had cash left for only another 10 days when it announced an annual $3 billion kronor ($460) cost-cutting plan in November.

Despite some protestations, the unions agreed to the tougher conditions.

Wallenberg says that “if we hadn’t got the agreements into place, SAS would have gone bankrupt and 15,000 employees would have lost their jobs.”