A couple of years ago SAS was on the brink of bankruptcy as it suffered from high labor costs, increased low-cost carrier competition and a complex shareholders structure, with the governments of Sweden, Denmark and Norway owning a stake and having their say. But its near-death experience seems to have worked miracles: Scandinavia's largest airline is headed for a full-year profit and embarking on a major expansion of long-haul operations that will add 300,000 seats to its intercontinental network. This might not seem a lot compared to Lufthansa or Air France, but for SAS, which carried just 27.3 million passengers systemwide in 2014, it's a major-and daring-step and investment.
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