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.
In this post:
SWISS expands North America flights in 2024
As of the summer of 2024, SWISS will be adding nonstop flights from Zurich (ZRH) to both Washington (IAD) and Toronto (YYZ).
Here’s how SWISS CEO Tamur Goudarzi Pour describes this expansion (which… almost seems like it was written by ChatGPT or something, no?):
“In the wake of the pandemic, it has now become clearer than ever that travel is a deeply-rooted human need, especially among the younger generations. The demand for air travel continues to steadily rise, and the loadings on our flights are now higher than they have ever been before. As The Airline of Switzerland, we connect our home country with the world; and, in doing so, we offer our customers a quality range of premium air services. We are delighted that we will be further expanding our route network next summer on both the short- and the long-haul front. And as we do so, we will continue to pursue the kind of balanced growth that pays due and full regard to our customers, to society and to environmental considerations and concerns.”
Let’s take a closer look at the details of each of these routes.
SWISS adds Zurich to Washington route
As of March 28, 2024, SWISS will be introducing a daily, year-round service between Zurich and Washington. The airline will operate the flight with the following schedule:
LX72 Zurich to Washington departing 1:00PM arriving 4:20PM
LX73 Washington to Zurich departing 8:45PM arriving 10:50AM (+1 day)
The 4,157-mile flight is blocked at 9hr20min westbound and 8hr5min eastbound. SWISS will use an Airbus A330-300 for the service, featuring 236 seats. This includes eight first class seats, 45 business class seats, and 183 economy class seats.
SWISS adds Zurich to Toronto route
As of May 10, 2024, SWISS will be introducing a seasonal, 5x weekly service between Zurich and Toronto. The airline will operate the flight with the following schedule:
LX80 Zurich to Toronto departing 9:55AM arriving 1:00PM
LX81 Toronto to Zurich departing 4:35PM arriving 6:30AM (+1 day)
The 4,044-mile flight is blocked at 9hr5min westbound and 7hr55min eastbound. As mentioned above, the service will be operated 5x weekly for summer, so it won’t be offered on Mondays and Wednesdays. Much like on the Washington flight, SWISS will also use an Airbus A330-300 for the service.
My take on SWISS’ transatlantic expansion
This growth on the part of SWISS seems sensible and conservative, so I don’t think there’s anything here that’s going to surprise anyone. Keep in mind that SWISS belongs to the Star Alliance transatlantic joint venture, which otherwise includes airlines like Air Canada, Austrian, Lufthansa, United, and more. The airlines coordinate schedules and split revenue on flights covered by this arrangement.
With that in mind:
- SWISS was actually supposed to launch flights to Washington in 2020, but that plan ended up getting scrapped due to the pandemic; United also operates this route, so the Star Alliance joint venture will see two daily flights in the market
- 5x weekly seasonal flights to Toronto seems logical enough as well, and Air Canada operates daily service in the market, so in summer we’ll see up to two daily flights in the market
As far as SWISS’ overall route network goes, the carrier’s destinations in the United States include Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Newark, and San Francisco. Meanwhile up until now, the carrier’s only destination in Canada has been Montreal.
Bottom line
SWISS will be expanding across the Atlantic in 2024, as the airline will launch two new routes. SWISS will start daily, year-round flights between Zurich and Washington, along with 5x weekly, seasonal flights between Zurich and Toronto.
It’s nice to see this expansion, though admittedly this is about as conservative as growth gets. These are new hub-to-hub routes in markets that are already served by transatlantic joint venture partners.
What do you make of SWISS adding flights to Washington and Toronto?
Swiss also announced new flight to Kosice (2nd biggest city in Slovakia) from 2024
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).
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.
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.
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...
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
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.
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...
Welcome back to DC, SWISS!
We’ve missed you!
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. :-)
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)?
LX still hasn't re-activated all its planes and i believe that 1-2 frames (A330s) are still in storage.
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.
Would love to see Zurich from Denver, though I get we already have 4 flights daily to Germany.
Edelweiss (WK) a LX subsidiary and LH Group airline, already flies ZRH-DEN 3x per week using A340s.
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....
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
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”…
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.
All Swiss long haul planes feature First class. There are 8 F Seats in the A330s that LX will use on both routes.
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).
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.
These comments are from the Chief Commercial Officer - Ben has incorrectly written CEO. The CEO, Dieter Vranckx, would never make such comments.
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.