It is 70 years since the Danish Air Lines, the Norwegian Aviation Company and the Swedish Intercontinental Airlines joined together in the Scandinavian Airlines System, which later became Scandinavian Airlines (SAS).
Negotiations on the merger of Swedish, Danish and Norwegian intercontinental flights took time, but 1 August 1946, the parties finally reached an agreement on the premises of Norwegian Shipowners’ Association in Oslo.
The first flight went to New York, and shortly afterwards SAS opened South American routes to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and Montevideo in Uruguay.
Aviation and had gathered headway and advanced greatly during the war, so most pilots were former war pilots. It was not particularly difficult to find stewardesses, but they had to meet strict requirements . Over
700 aspiring women applied for the 22 positions, which required that you spoke at least three languages, a degree from an university college and preferably one which you trained you as a nurse, according to the travel and lifestyle magazine Scandinavian Traveler.
Now the operations of SAS include domestic flights in the Scandinavian countries, to most of Europe’s major cities and to some destinations in North America, the Middle East and Asia.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today
