SAS Strives to Fulfill Passenger Dreams and Its Own With Experiences Program for Elite Flyers
Photo Credit: SAS frequent flyers visit the airline's catering kitchen near Tokyo Narita Airport during a recent trip led by the airline's head chef, Peter Lawrance. Lawrance is the foreground center, with a beard. SAS
Skift Take
We're not surprised SAS frequent flyers love to take trips with the airline's head chef, though we're impressed the airline found 20 takers willing to spend $5,000 a piece (plus 100,000 points) for a five-day trip to Japan.
Peter Lawrance, head chef of Scandinavian airline SAS, often says he has one of the world's best jobs. And unlike some people, who say it but may not mean it, Lawrance is probably right. His airline wants to improve its food — it is betting premium customers at 35,000 feet will embrace the farm-to-table movement as on the ground — and SAS gives him an ample budget to make it happen.
Lawrance's Instagram feed is filled colorful photographs of his travels. One month, he's trying soy sauces in Hong Kong, judging how temperatures affect fermentation. In another, he's near Washington Dulles Airport, tasting pasteurized cheeses he hopes European palates will find palatable. In yet another, he's in Boston, watching a chef prepare sausage stuffed roulades for that day's flight to Copenhagen.
Sometimes, he's is even Japan, visiting the dairy farm that produces milk SAS uses for cheese, butter and ice cream.
A little more than a year ago, one of the airline's senior executives accom
