Star Alliance member SWISS has just announced a transatlantic expansion for 2024, which will see the airline launch service to two new destinations in North America. This is only part of the Lufthansa Group’s transatlantic expansion for next summer, as Lufthansa is launching flights to Minneapolis and Raleigh.
Continue reading: SWISS Adding Flights To Washington & Toronto In 2024
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
The Swiss expansion is nothing crazy or creative (unlike Lufthansa, did not expect MSP-FRA to be announced) but I’m glad to see IAD actually launch.
And that’s why the CEO is paid the big bucks. To use off the shelf boilerplate statements that can be applied to any airline.
I notice there's no explicit mention of First Class service on the Toronto route. Only British and Emirates include F in their YYZ offering. Cathay, Lufthansa, Etihad, famed for their F service, fly to Toronto without an F cabin. I won't be even slightly surprised if Swiss gives F a miss on this route.
this is the fun time of the year when airlines start announcing their summer 2024 plans.
That said, it will be interesting to see if AC and UA maintain their schedules or if LX takes over flights, allowing their JV partners to redeploy airplanes elsewhere.
While it is certain that any one can fill planes profitably in the summer, that is a whole lot harder to do on a year round basis esp. in the winter to/from Switzerland. The strength of JV hubs that maintain high amounts of winter capacity is because of the global connectivity of those hubs in addition to the local demand
All Swiss long haul planes feature First class. There are 8 F Seats in the A330s that LX will use on both routes.
Would love to see Zurich from Denver, though I get we already have 4 flights daily to Germany.
These are the kinds of routes that I'm always sort of surprised to learn didn't exist already. I guess I just assumed that Swiss would fly to two of the largest Star Alliance transatlantic hubs on the continent. Funny.
All Swiss widebodies have a First cabin. I'm fairly certain that they sell it as First, instead of full-fare Business on routes with no First demand, on all routes (Tampa shouldn't count, since those 777 flights were sold by Edelweiss).
Where is LX getting the planes for this route? Does anyone know which cities LX is reducing frequencies to make these routes work (since they don't have any new widebodies being delivered in the next year)?
Off topic, why does OMAAT page now show "Capital one" is this a new development? Is OMAAT now owned by Capital One or has it been this way all along? I'm a long time (5yr ish) reader
@ Ken -- Thanks for reading! Nope, OMAAT certainly isn't owned by Capital One. However, Capital One is launching the Venture X Business this week online, so is sponsoring the blog, and you'll see that reflected for that period. 🙂
Edelweiss (WK) a LX subsidiary and LH Group airline, already flies ZRH-DEN 3x per week using A340s.
Believe it or not, Switzerland fares better than most other central and Northern European countries during the winter due to ski tourism and the WEF/Davos…these help with some off-off-peak periods in the Jan/Feb timeframe when most other central/Northern European countries are pretty much “dead”…
Just flew back from Zurich to IAD on United's flight. That flight left at noon, and this one will fly an hour later. My flight was 75% full. Seems redundant to me.
LX still hasn't re-activated all its planes and i believe that 1-2 frames (A330s) are still in storage.
Is there no demand for IAH? This is the hub of the UA, which belongs to the same Star Alliance, and it's quite a big city, and it's very surprising that there's no route from ZRH to this place.
These comments are from the Chief Commercial Officer - Ben has incorrectly written CEO. The CEO, Dieter Vranckx, would never make such comments.
Glad to see Swiss flying to YYZ.
Growing up there, I always wondered why (unlike YUL) we got stuck with only AC equipment to Switzerland. Endured a few of those flights. Don’t think SWISS (or the former SwissAir) ever had their own aircraft to YYZ.
CLJ and KSC are also being launched, which are very interesting additions to the network, particularly in case of KSC which was so far only connected to *A network via VIE and WAW, so ZRH as a much larger hub will boost connectivity significantly (CLJ has had FRA flights for a while).
Houston is not a great hub for transatlantic or transpacific service due to its geography. While the Houston economy has always been very global, Houston is very poorly positioned for connecting traffic esp. given that UA has multiple other hubs going both east and west that are better positioned.
AA makes DFW work because North Texas is slightly better from a geographic standpoint, is a much larger hub than UA at IAH, and AA has much fewer alternative hubs so has to make DFW work - which also limits what UA can do at IAH
UA also flies between IAD and Geneva. I think there is a huge diplomatic traffic between DC and Swiss because of UN agencies in Geneva, annual Davos, IMF, World bank being headquartered in DC etc...
Swiss also announced new flight to Kosice (2nd biggest city in Slovakia) from 2024