Business Travel News carried a piece on Swiss’ U.S. and fleet plans based on an interview with the airline’s senior director for the Americas, suggesting that the airline wants to be high-end.
Swiss aims to “be closer to our customer and have a higher product point” with new aircraft. “When you have a fleet of 90 aircraft, its easier to get there,”
They plan to deploy six new Boeing 777-300ER aircraft to the Western U.S. and East Asia. They do not plan to add premium economy, but do currently plan to keep offering first class.
Sadly, Swiss first class redemptions are available only to Miles & More elite frequent flyer members and not at all to partner airline frequent flyer members.
Swiss currently flies to Boston, Chicago, New York JFK, Newark, Los Angeles, Miami and San Francisco in the U.S. plus Montreal in Canada. They’re looking to add cities in the U.S.
For Swiss regional operations, Bombardier CSeries aircraft will begin to replace Avro RJ100s. And beginning in 2019, Swiss will be getting some of the Airbus A320neo aircraft that Lufthansa Group has ordered.
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I have flown them in business class and also Austrian Air to Vienna. Austrian is much better. I was not impressed with the cabin layout and the seating comfort on the beds on Swiss. Entertainment system on Austrian was better also and the food slightly better depending on your tastes. I like the custom specialty coffees on Austrian.
I hope they come back to IAD if they add cities. Seems unlikely considering how many Star Alliance members have flights to Europe from there including United, Lufthansa, Austrian, Brussels Airline and Turkish.
The first class is very outdated and uncomfortable. I really hope they will do something pretty soon.
Houston or Toronto would be my bets on new destinations. Hope it’s IAH – would love to finally have that nonstop flight from TX – ZRH once again. But I’m not sure there will be that much traffic to fuel the route unfortunately 🙁
When I flew them last September, they said they are getting new F seats, though on that flight and the one last month to Beijing, load factors weren’t terribly high. We’ll see how long this “protecting the product” stuff goes on, likely until they miss earnings. Also agree that Austrian has a superior hard and soft product.
Of course no one reading View from the Wing flies in Y but in case you happen to, LX has one of the best Y products around. 32″ pitch, strong IFE, good recline (sorry knee defenders), and staff that cares.
Compare that to OS (who has great J I will admit from my lone experience in it) where the groundstaff and CS staff are incompetent and rude.
It sounds like the 777s were obtained more for replacement than expansion, probably so LX can eliminate the old gas-guzzling A340s it has on longer routes.
I doubt we’ll see many new long-haul destinations in North America since they’re positioning themselves as a high-end carrier and they already cover most of the cities with heavy premium demand. I could see Houston or maybe Dallas since neither has direct service to Switzerland now.
Others have suggested Washington or Toronto, but I doubt there’s enough demand since UA and AC already fly those routes.