My first time on Swissair in years, certainly since before Covid-19. The mobile app was helpful, but they cancelled my flight in early June without notification until 12 hours before my flight in late August. Instead of speedily working to remedy the situation, they sent me into a morass of red tape.

The Zurich hub is like a 'developing' world (third world or Russian/Chinese) grade airport that cannot even air condition the terminal.

What? The Zurich airport is like a developing world? Seriously? Zurich airport is fantastic - we fly through there all the time. Surely I've misunderstood your post?

You simply can't depend on any airline to notify you of anything, even if they sent you notifications in the past.

You really need to go to the airlines website and verify the date, time, seat assignments on a regular basis. For a ticket booked far in advance that would be at least once a month up to a month before departure and more often after that point (two weeks before, one week, three days, day before, day of).

You could even go so far as seeing if your departure is still available for booking. If it is not avaiable (i.e. sold out) two weeks before departure then that would be a bad sign.

Swissair has not existed for many years.

I don’t recall ZRH airport as being 3rd world like.

If you’re not getting flight change/cancellation notifications, it’s likely you have not provided contact details in your profile or booking. Or you have but they’re incorrect. Or the email notification went into junk/spam.

US carriers might not bother to send out notifications, but airlines like Swiss, Lufthansa etc do. It simply doesn’t make sense that a flight would be cancelled in June but only notified in August. The history of your booking will verify whether notifications were sent out & what the response was.

I"ve always gotten notifications from any airline, US or others, but I admit I haven't had many flights in the last two years. I thought Zurich airport was fantastic the last time I flew through there, but that was summer 2019. Given I went home early due to the summer heatwave that year, pretty sure it was AC'd or I'd remember. Of course I don't know about now.

Swissair versus Swiss International Airlines isn't exactly memorable and you still get there via swissair.com, anyway. So I guess they like the name.

Sorry you had a bad experience at ZRH.

Reminds me of a guy I travel with who sweats profusely any time he has to walk more than 100 meters. He likes the AC set to something like 68F/20C and complains anywhere that's not as cold as a blast freezer. Europeans just don't set their AC that cold like many places in the US do.

Maybe it has something to do with the high cost of electricity, exacerbated now by natural gas shortages driven by the crisis in Ukraine.

ZRH is a wonderful airport. They sell some of the best chocolates in the world. I don't think I noticed anything else about it. What could be more important??

In all seriousness, I agree that we must check for schedule changes and cancellations ourselves. Ww have the technology, no reason not to use it.

It actually was SWISS where I did a fare search for flights that I already had booked and found that my flights were not available. I called and the agent said the flight was sold out. I knew that was impossible - that business class LAX-ZRH would be sold out three weeks+ in advance in July. But that was 2020 and shutdown time, so the cancellaton was fully expected. I did get an email the next day that the outbound was cancelled and another email the next day the the inbound trip was cancelled. That was a one-off situatilon, for sure.

My experience/knowledge of not getting email notifications goes back a long way and I am permanently scarred by it . I have a (healthy) mild distrust of the communication (verbal, email, otherwise) ability of any airline. It is a ~trust but verify situation.

and, yes! We have the technology!!

United was kind of famous for changing things and not sending notifications. Maybe they fixed it. Stuff happens. Sometimes a "computer glitch" is really human error but computer systems are not perfect. There have been several posts here in the past where people complained about not being notified aboiut schedule changes, flight cancellation, seat assignment changes, etc

I picked up a bit of a "nobody told me" excuse in the OP story. Flight was cancelled in June but no notificatilon until 12 hours before departure in August? I find that believable. The booking for August had to have been made in June or earlier. Not checking on it once in the two months before departure is the part that I find difficult to believe (except in the case where a person just hasn't learned to be skeptical about airlines getting things right).

An airport got a bit warm in the high heat of August? I'm shocked.

I always check flight status with the airlines website because you can’t rely on them to keep you updated.
The Zurich airport being equated as “ third world” simply is untrue. I understand you want to vent but make your case as sensibly as possible to be believed.
Weve been to Narita and BKK before and found them to be warm as well.

I've been to airports all over the world that were either too hot or too cold. Airports are huge facilities and it's impossible to heat or cool them to everyone's liking.

I have learned to check my airline reservations regularly. It only takes a few minutes. Recently United sent me a message that there was a very minor change in a booking.

I was in the Zurich airport this morning, so I took special note. I thought it was quite nice, modern and efficient - albeit large and busy. The adjacent rail, dining and hotel hub is also very convenient.