A business executive informed reporters on Saturday that the Scandinavian airline SAS and its pilots have agreed to prolong their salary negotiations until Monday to avoid a strike.

According to the unions, up to 1,000 pilots in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway intend to go on strike if negotiations fail, leaving approximately 30,000 passengers stranded each day.

Marianne Hernaes, the senior negotiator for SAS, told reporters following the latest round of overnight negotiations, "We need to sleep, none of us have slept for a really long time,"

A strike would occur at a difficult moment for loss-making SAS, attempting to reorganize its business by implementing significant cost reductions, generating fresh cash, and converting debt to equity as part of a plan to save the airline from bankruptcy.

The Swedish newspaper Expressen had previously reported, citing unnamed sources, that an agreement had been struck. However, SAS stated that negotiations were still ongoing to avert a strike.