Switzerland may be small but it has four airlines flying from their Swiss hubs across Europe and the world.
Let’s start with the biggest and make our way down to the smallest
Undoubtedly the best known, and by far the country’s biggest flagship carrier, is SWISS.
Part of the Lufthansa Group and the larger Star Alliance, its fleet flies to over 100 destinations worldwide from Zurich and Geneva.
Not only that, but it also operates an air shuttle service between Geneva and Zurich, which flies on average eight times a day. It is intended for passengers from the French-speaking part of the country who are making a connection to international flights in Zurich.
Where does SWISS fly?
Aside from most European capitals and other short and medium haul destinations (some of which it shares with its ‘sister’ company, Edelweiss — read more about it below), SWISS also flies to a number of intercontinental destinations, including Asia, Africa, and South America.
In North America, SWISS flies to New York from both Zurich in Geneva.
From Zurich, it also flies to Chicago, Miami, Newark, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Toronto, Montreal, and…Appleton.
Wait, where on earth is Appleton?
This is one of the numerous off-the-beaten track US destinations that SWISS lists on its website.
Turns out, it is a city in Outagamie County, Wisconsin — not exactly an in-demand destination for people from Switzerland — but it is nevertheless listed on the company website along with other US cities that few Swiss tourists typically visit, like Boise (Idaho), Cedar Rapids (Iowa), and Muskegon (Michigan).
Looking closely, you will see that SWISS doesn’t actually fly there (the runways at Appleton airport, for instance, actually located in nearby Greenville, can’t accommodate jumbo jets).
In reality, these flights are operated either by SWISS’ parter airline United via its Newark hub, or by Edelweiss, if the city in question in a bona-fide holiday destination.
This is to say, you can book your trip to, say Boise, on SWISS, but reach that destination on United.
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Edelweiss Air
Partly owned by SWISS, the 20-aircraft Edelweiss (with five more planes on order) is known as a ‘leisure’ airline which flies from its Zurich hub to 97 of the world’s most popular vacation destinations, both in Europe and Asia, as well as far-away lands like Cancun in Mexico, Cape Town in South Africa, Liberia in Costa Rica, Male in Maldives, and Montego Bay in Jamaica, among others.
You can see all its destinations here.
Photo: Pixabay
In North America, Edelweiss flies to Denver, Tampa, Las Vegas, and Seattle in the United States, as well as to Calgary, Halifax, and Vancouver in Canada.
All of its flights are operated jointly with its big sister SWISS, which means that though the aircraft has Edelweiss livery, the flights are code-shared between both airlines.
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Helvetic Airways
Though its name is distinctly Swiss, the airline, previously named Odette Airways, is a Swiss regional carrier headquartered in Zurich.
Interestingly, Odette flew almost exclusively Albanian guest workers and their families between Switzerland and their home countries, earning the nicknames such as “Kosovo Express,” “Pristina Express,” and “Kosova Airways.”
From 2004, its name morphed to Helvetic Airways, which is based in Zurich, but also operates out of Bern’s regional airport.
Image by Heiner from Pixabay
Its fleet of 22 Embraer aircraft flies to seven short and medium-haul holiday destinations: Palma de Mallorca, Heraklion, Kos, Rhodes, Larnaca, Djerba, and Monastir.
Helvetic occasionally operates short and medium-haul flights on behalf of SWISS, but it is fully privately owned by a billionaire businessman named Martin Ebner.
Chair airlines
The ‘youngest’ Swiss airline (born in 2019) and the only one whose name doesn’t evoke its country of origin, Chair flies its four Airbus planes and from Zurich and Basel’s EuroAirport to 10 vacations destinations in Europe and Northern Africa: Heraklion, Hurghada, Kos, Mallorca, Larnaca, Marsa Alam, Ohrid, Prishtina, Rhodos, and Skopje.
Photo: Company Facebook page
It is the only one of Switzerland’s airliners that is not associated, either by parnership or code shares, with the other three.
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Do these airlines compete with each other price-wise?
There is no competition as such between SWISS and Edelweiss — not only because they are ‘sisters’, but primarily because they don’t operate on the same routes.
As for Helvetic and Chair, some of the destinations they fly to — such as Heraklion, Mallorca, and Kos — are the same, so it is worth checking prices on both to compare.
