A Sunday afternoon flight from Copenhagen to Chicago should be the dull end of a holiday. Instead, one travel writer came away calling it one of the most relaxing flights he's had in ages — and the reason had less to do with the seat than with the catering and the film library.

The flight in question was SAS's A330-300 business class, roughly an eight-hour hop across the Atlantic. The author boarded with low expectations for connectivity — he assumes onboard Wi-Fi won't work unless a plane has Starlink, and SAS doesn't — so he'd finished his essential tasks in advance and treated the flight as an impromptu cinema afternoon.

First, the food. He'd pre-ordered Nordic salmon with tomato vinaigrette, summer cabbage in brown butter and a Jerusalem artichoke soufflé, while his travel companion went for beef with osso buco sauce, polenta cake and grilled artichoke. Both landed perfectly, as did the appetisers, desserts and coffee — consistent with his view that SAS catering is reliably excellent at the front of the plane. Before landing came an open-face sandwich topped with egg and shrimp, a very Scandinavian sign-off.

Then the sleep that didn't happen. Unable to doze between meals, he watched A Pale View of Hills, a Japanese film he found riveting, with an ending that stayed with him for days. His companion watched Sound of Falling, a German psychological drama unfolding across a century at a rural farmhouse, and he switched to that one afterwards. Both films impressed enough to make a self-declared non-movie-watcher wonder what he's been missing at home.

The verdict on the product itself is measured rather than gushing. SAS doesn't have the newest business class seat in the sky, and the author doesn't pretend otherwise. But between a solid six hours of sleep on the outbound leg and a genuinely restful return, he concludes he'd happily fly the airline intercontinental again — ideally on points, once he tops up his EuroBonus balance. Add a friendly crew and well-behaved kids in tow, and the flight ranked about as well as a day flight can.

Why should this matter to you? Because it's a useful reminder that transatlantic business class doesn't have to mean chasing the flashiest lie-flat pod. SAS's strength is the softer stuff: food you actually look forward to, calm service, and an entertainment library good enough to salvage a sleepless flight. For travellers booking Copenhagen–Chicago or connecting onto SAS's wider Scandinavian and European network, it's a data point worth weighing — especially if you can snag a seat with EuroBonus points or a Star Alliance redemption. If you fly daytime eastbound-to-westbound routes where sleeping matters less, the meal service and films may matter more than the seat generation anyway.