Mangel på flygere - SAS` datterselskap Cimber Air kansellerer 760 flyvninger - Curt Lewis

Cimber cancels flights due to pilot shortage

Cimber Bombardier CRJ900

SAS Scandinavian Airline's Danish subsidiary Cimber will cancel 760 services through mid-May as it fights to overcome a shortage of pilots.

SAS acquired Cimber in December 2014 to handle regional and short-haul flights on thinner European routes, using a fleet of 12 Bombardier CRJ900s. The Scandinavian mainline carrier transferred some pilots over to the new subsidiary, but expansion at the parent company means many are returning, leaving gaps in Cimber's aircrew workforce.

"Some of those pilots had already been with SAS and had it in their contracts the right to come back if expansion occurred," SAS head of media Knut Morten Johansen said.

Instead of trying to plug gaps in schedules as they occurred, he said, a decision was made to cancel the services through May to give some more certainty to services and passengers.

No routes will be abandoned, Johansen said, but frequencies would be thinned out.

Most of the routes affected are intra-Danish, or in and out of Denmark. The number of canceled flights should be put in context of the total of 130,000 that would be flown by SAS over the three-month period, he said.

The SAS group as a whole was recruiting 220 pilots to cope with its expansion and had received more than 1,750 applications for the posts; the problem was the time required to train pilots on the CRJ900s.

"We're not satisfied with [the situation], but we are dealing OK with it," he said.

SAS believes it will resolve the situation by summer, he added.