Swamp monsters and Swiss chocolate as standard (Swiss International Airlines)

Member Name: ms_memory

Product:	Swiss International Airlines
Date:	22/05/09 (93 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Reasonably-priced; excellent customer service; lovely chocolate!

Disadvantages: Duty-free prices only in Swiss francs, annyoing music/TV in the cabin.

*** Introduction ***

Swiss International Airlines has a total of 28 flights daily from the UK and Ireland to Zurich, Basel and Geneva, as well as to 90 other destinations worldwide. It's a Star Alliance Member and won the Skytrax 2009 Award for Best European Airline.


*** Where they fly ***

Obviously the airline specialises in air travel to Switzerland, but since Zurich Airport is a pretty large hub and the country itself is very centrally-located within Europe, I find them useful for getting connecting flights to other places on the Continent or further afield. I travel fairly regularly between Germany and Spain, and Swiss is very handy for me as an alternative to flying with Lufthansa or Iberia and changing in Madrid, which can be quite stressful.


*** Booking process ***

I always book online and find the website www.swiss.com straightforward to use (once you've sussed out how to get it into English - which can sometimes take a few attempts). A feature I appreciate is that your flight confirmation arrives in your inbox immediately and comes out as an easily readable 2-page document with an overview of all flight times and details, which is really handy as you can print it onto one double-sided page and it doesn't waste reams of paper with unnecessary insurance and speedy boarding/hotel ads à la Easyjet. The website allows you to claim cashback if you shop through sites such as quidco.com and mirrorcashback.com. There is also a handy link on the Swiss site to buying rail tickets in Switzerland online.


** My most recent experiences with Swiss ***

My most recent trip with Swiss was from Berlin Tegel to Valencia and back, via Zurich, in Airbus 320s with a good amount of leg room and grey leather seats. On the first flight out there weren't many passengers and the flight attendant offered me the opportunity to move so I could have a whole row to myself. The crew were very friendly, polite and non-officious, which is not always the case with all airlines.

The safety video was an animated, Monsters Inc.-style affair, featuring a Boo lookalike bouncing around a plane and looking fascinated by a safety instruction card and thrilled at the prospect of being evacuated and forced down a slide into the sea!


*** Onboard entertainment ***

The Swiss Magazine, published monthly, is very glossy, full of beautiful photographs and fairly serious travel articles (in English, German and French) and avoids having too many ads. It also contains medical advice e.g. on how to avoid DVT when flying.

The shopping catalogue was mainly full of luxury products such as watches and jewellery. While there were some perfume and cosmetics offers, it was difficult to work out just how good value they really were as the prices were only given in Swiss francs (CHF) - something I feel could be improved upon considering it's an international airline. The same products were also advertised on the TV screens - again only in the one currency.

Each row of three seats has an individual TV screen, which not only lets you watch the flight's progress and updates of the air temperature etc., but also makes it very difficult to avoid the in-flight TV shows. On all 4 of my most recent flights we were treated to several episodes of 'Just for Laughs', which I worked out was filmed in Canada, but it was silent, slapstick comedy, supposed to overcome any possible language barriers with the universal language of humour.

It was Candid-Camera style fare, with scenes designed to make fun of the general public and their reactions. e.g. a woman would pretend to drop her wallet into a river. She would then enlist the help of a kind and usually overweight passer-by, who would attempt to fish out said wallet, precariously hanging over the riverbank, when suddenly a giant, grey, slimy swamp-monster creature dressed in rags would jump out of the water and scare the poor passer-by silly, almost causing him to fall in. In another scene, the lights would be switched off in a doctor's waiting-room, much to the confusion of the patients, who were filmed with an infra-red camera.

I noticed that the show was more popular with German-speaking passengers that Spanish ones. The German gentleman in front of me laughed so much that his seat - and my tray table - shook for much of the flight. I saw this programme four times in two weeks, so forgive me if I didn't find it as amusing! On my second flight, which was particularly long, we were also treated to an episode of Mr Bean causing chaos at the barber's and taking his teddy to a village fete, which once again has my neighbour in spasm of mirth. What is it with German-speaking countries and Mr Bean?

Swiss also seems to love playing cheesy pop and disco classics during the boarding and embarkation periods - it's just a shame that its repertoire only stretches to about 5 tunes. Try a few hours listening to 'Love is in the Air', 'Young Hearts Run Free' and 'Sexy Eyes' on a loop when delayed, so loud that they invade whatever you're listening to on your MP3 player, and see whether you don't also wish that the 70s - your whole life, in fact, never happened (see below).


*** Refreshments ***

Our snack on the short Berlin-Zurich morning flight was a nice, fresh, non-plastic-packed currant bun, but there was only thick cream available to whiten the tea - yuck! On the Zurich-Valencia flight we were given a ham sandwich. Both my return flights offered turkey sandwiches on seeded bread (with a veggie option if required, though this wasn't advertised). Every snack was rounded off with a small bar of deliciously melt-in-the-mouth Swiss chocolate.


*** Coping with delays ***

On my second flight, from Zurich to Valencia, there was an announcement towards the end of the journey that a cockpit loudspeaker had developed a fault and Spanish aviation regulations meant that we would not be allowed to land in Valencia after all. After a period of circling, we were told that we would be returning to Zurich to have the fault fixed. There was no landing slot in Zurich, so we had to fly to Geneva and sit on the runway for 2 hours, listening to the 3 above-mentioned disco tracks on repeat as a technician tried to repair the cockpit speaker (it's a shame it wasn't the cabin speakers that were broken). Unfortunately a piece was missing and had to be flown in from Zurich, so we were dispatched into Geneva airport, handed vouchers for 10 CHF (£6), and told to come back in 3 hours.

Although this was all obviously extremely annoying, I was impressed with the way that the passengers were kept informed at all times of what was going on. I've been delayed with other airlines who either didn't give out information or directly said it wasn't their problem and we'd have to continue the journey ourselves (e.g. Ryanair). At least with Swiss I got the impression that the crew were trying their best to ensure that we were comfortable, and when we finally boarded again for our second attempt to fly to Valencia, a steward went round asking whether everyone had had enough to eat and drink in the airport and offering extra food and coffee if not.


*** Conclusion ***

In general I enjoy flying with Swiss and would do so again. The routes are convenient for me, well-priced (Berlin-Valencia cost me Euro240 or roughly £212 at the time of writing, which was half the price of Lufthansa or Iberia for the same dates) and the customer service is second-to-none. The silly TV shows I can ignore if I try really hard! My only bugbear is the annoying music played on takeoff, landing and especially during delays.

Summary: Like Switzerland itself, the national carrier is generally well-organised - but very cheesy.