Three cheers for SwissAir!
 

I wanted to wish everyone at SwissAir the best of luck now that it is just "Swiss" I was on the last transcontinental flight from Zurich to JFK on Sat. and this is one of the best airlines I have ever flown. The attendants were awesome and the food good! Hopefully, this will still be the case in the future!

I believe that maybe it always was a great airline. If stories reported on NPR are true, this was a case of a Frequent Flyer program driving a good airline into financial ruin (must have been SOME financial mismanagement there). Has anyone heard - - are all Qualiflyer program "miles" now all wiped out?<BR><BR>Interesting development if it's true.<BR><BR>Best wishes,<BR><BR>Rex<BR><BR>

Swissair was my airline of choice on many occasions. It is my understanding that it was not the frequent flyer program that did Swissair in, but a CEO who expanded too fast and too widely [not to mention unwisely] beyond the core business of running an airline. As a result 2 other airlines "went down" with Swissair. <BR><BR>I have also seen an interpretation of what happens as follows: that, in order to get control of Swissair and turn it over to the excellent Crossair management the banks refused to bankroll Swissair any further. Crossair is a great regional carrier, long a member of the Qualiflyer group. They are planning to join up with American in One World, but I can't imagine they would abandon the qualiflyer group as those are their long time patrons and this wouldn't be a good time to go about alienating them.

S.Fowler is on the right track: Swissair didn't go down as a consequence of their FFP but due to gross mismanagement (many people saw it coming, but no-one wanted to believe it).<BR><BR>At the end of September 2001 the two major Swiss banks bought Crossair's 67% of stock held by Swissair group to keep Crossair alive. Following cash injection from the Swiss government and corporations, Crossair took over the major part of Swissair's operations as of March 31st and is doing business as Swiss.<BR><BR>It has been communicated that Qualiflyer will be kept on and miles will remain valid (I've just exchanged miles for a flight to Barcelona in May).<BR><BR>Enjoy your trips.<BR><BR>Phil.

You can't keep a good airline down. I have traveled with Swissair over the years, the last time just last year. I have always been pleased with the way they operated the airline, and I know the name change and the change of management will only make it better.

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