Finnair has denied that it has discussed about a possible merger with SAS. According to manager Christer Haglund, Finnair has not negotiated with SAS and that there are no discussions going on. The Finnish economic newspaper Taloussanomat has reported today that there have been many discussions about merger on different levels.

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In my opinion the merger is quite impossible. The EU-commission would hardly accept it.

Reading the thread title, I could already see the European Commission jumping onto this matter!

Why in the world would the European Commision want to stop that? It's not like SAS and Finnair are mega carriers to begin with. I suspect the Finnish government and people would be the ones to complain the most.

I think it would be a great merger for everyone. The company could retain the SAS name, and become a bigger force in Europe. Especially if Finnair is thinking about someday replacing the MD11's with A340's, there would be a lot of fleet commonality there. I dont see what problems the EU would have because this company would still be smaller then Air France, Brittish Airways, KLM, and Lufthansa.

yes but then SAS would have monopoly in Scandinavia and northern europe and EU wouldnt gonna like that!

EU would definently not like it! They even stopped Scania-Volvo merger as the joint company would have too large market share in Sweden (and only in Sweden). Can you imagine what would happen, if there is a company which has larger than 50% market share in 4 countries? They are not looking into the EU as a whole, but to every national market separately. And don't merge Finnair with SAS - they have so good deals availble. Much cheaper than SAS