SAS CEO Matts Jansson to step down

SAS President and CEO Matts Jansson, who faced a string of escalating labor, operational and financial crises since taking the helm of SAS in January 2007, announced he will step down this fall.

"Next year, I turn 60 and that is also when my contract expires," he said in a statement. "I believe that I have done my share for SAS. There are still great challenges to come for SAS, but the platform is in place…The company is now well positioned to face the future."

Within six months of being named to lead SAS, the airline was hit by a surprise walkout by Danish and Swedish cabin attendants that cost an estimated SEK265 million ($43 million). That was followed later in 2007 by a spate of landing gear incidents involving the carrier's Q400s that caused SAS to withdraw the turboprops from its fleet at a cost of SEK700 million. There followed the 2008-09 oil bubble and bust and the global financial crisis. SAS Group losses totaled SEK2.95 billion last year and SEK6.36 billion in 2008.

Jansson's answer was the sale of non-core assets including Spanair, Air Greenland, airBaltic and its 20% holding in Bmi, and a series of ambitious cost and efficiency programs that including wringing significant savings from its mostly unionized workforce. The current program, Core SAS, was launched in February 2009 with the initial goal of saving SEK4 billion annually and the carrier subsequently said it had identified SEK7.8 billion in opportunities. A series of successful financial transactions in 2009-2010 including an SEK5 billion rights offering helped strengthen the balance sheet. But red ink continued in the 2010 first quarter to the tune of SEK712 million. SAS will report first half results Aug. 18.

Jansson, an outsider who came to the airline industry from retailing and trading giant Axel Johnson, once joked to ATW that his first year in the airline industry "was more like two years with all the overtime." Although he arrived hoping to maintain SAS as an independent airline, recent remarks suggest he accepted that it would have to become part of a larger organization once it got its house in order.

Photo: SAS President & CEO Matt Jansson