Bad news from the north: Both Icelandair and SkyTeam member SAS have announced changes to their lounge access policy. While SAS’s change only affects its intercontinental premium economy flights (where barely any airlines offer lounge access anyways), Icelandair is cutting lounge access for all Saga Class tickets outside Reykjavík, turning its supposedly business class more and more into a premium economy.
Icelandair Saga Class Lounge Access Only in Reykjavik
Icelandair offers an interesting hybrid product with its Saga Class, combining elements of both business class and premium economy. On short-haul flights, passengers enjoy wide recliner seats, hot meals, and other perks. However, Icelandair also positions itself as an option for transatlantic flights. Compared to the lie-flat seats offered by other airlines, the hard product of Icelandair’s Saga Class feels more like an upgraded premium economy.
To compensate, Icelandair has focused on offering a strong soft product. This includes cocktails, champagne, (mostly) highly rated meals, two checked bags of 32 kg each, and, of course, lounge access—all the amenities typically expected from a business class experience.
At least, until now. Icelandair is making cuts when it comes to lounge access. A new note on their website now includes three asterisks, stating:
***Saga Premium tickets purchased after April 1, 2025, include only Icelandair Saga Lounge access at Keflavík airport.
This means that starting April 1, 2025, Icelandair will remove lounge access at all airports worldwide—except for its own Saga Lounge in Keflavík. More than 40 partner lounges will be affected, including those in Amsterdam, Stockholm, Brussels, Copenhagen, Rome, Helsinki, London, Lisbon, Oslo, Prague, Dublin, as well as multiple North American cities. Going forward, access to these lounges will only be available if passengers book the significantly more expensive Saga Flex fare or have elite status in the Icelandair Saga Club. Neither applies to the majority of travellers.
SAS Plus Lounge Access Limited to Short-Haul Flights
Talking about hybrid, SAS also has a weird premium economy / business hybrid product on its flights within Europe. Unlike the typical euro business experience, they don’t block the seat next to you, and the catering is subpar. However, SAS Plus does get you lounge access, as a business class ticket would.
This led to long-haul premium economy travellers getting lounge access at various European airports before their feeder flights to Copenhagen/Stockholm. And for some reason, SAS was so generous, as to also let these premium economy passengers use their SAS lounges before the long-haul flights too.
While lounge access remains on the European flights, from April 1 onwards, you’ll no longer have access before the long-haul flight. Only tickets booked before March 3, 2025, are not affected by this change.
Though this is a sad development, it’s hard to harshly criticize SAS for it, as all other European airlines stick you in an economy class seat on the feeder flights, with no lounge access included at any point of the trip. What should be criticized is that they retroactively removed lounge access for those who booked in the past 4 weeks.
Conclusion
Both SAS Go and Icelandair Saga had some business class aspects to their product. These are now mostly being cut. The soft product of both airlines is now still above average for premium economy, but quite far away from what one would usually expect from a business class ticket.