As initially announced, SAS will change from Star Alliance to SkyTeam on September 01 – with corresponding changes for its EuroBonus members. Changes at high level have already been presented – and the good news is that this alliance change will not be misused for some program devaluations.

Award levels stay similar to the current ones, the fairly low tier level qualification criteria stay the same and tier bonuses will be increased. As its main new loyalty competitor/partner – Air France KLM’s Flying Blue – has though a far richer program proposition than SAS’s former (still current) partner Lufthansa, it remains to be seen whether this will be sufficient in the long run.

One of the most remarkable change is though that the whole of Russia was moved out from the zone Europe to Asia. As the most relevant international connections out of Russia are now all to the East, this makes award travel actually much cheaper for flights such as between China and Russia.

If you are an SAS tier member and are nevertheless interested in staying rather in the Star Alliance environment, Lufthansa’s Miles & More program has a status offer you may want to look into.