Swiss Air Return Flight Addendum

I came back to San Francisco from Zurich recently on Swiss Air, and had several observations about the return flight.

 

For long haul flights that lasts at least 11 hours, three people in the cockpit is the norm for such long haul flights.  This particular A340 seem to have a retrofitted business class that looked very nice.  Unfortunately, for me, I was still stuck in economy, but a couple of additional perks offset the fact that I sat at the bulkhead right behind the business class.  These were the fact that Swiss Air also decided to add in ice cream on the return flight, it was this Movenpick brand vanilla ice cream that I hadn’t heard of before, but I’m not complaining.

Also, the belly and nose cameras were active, although being at the bulkhead, I couldn’t watch us take off or land, although flying over the Atlantic and the continental US meant that there really wasn’t that much to see.  At times like this, a service similar to Channel 9 on United would’ve been nice.  It’s interesting to note that the pilots tended to be trilingual as they gave information in English, German and French.  I can only imagine that the Swiss school system must be pretty good to enable this type of service.

Overall, the Swiss Air service was great, only if they allowed the bonus miles on United's Mileage programs, that would make this a perfect airline to fly on every time, even if it is economy.

The AVRO RJ 85/100

On my travels to Europe, I’ve seen this little plane with four engines on numerous occasions.  They are typically flown by Lufthansa or Swiss, this time I got to sit in one.  It was the AVRO RJ 85/100.  It had an interest 2-3 seating configuration, which made it possible for about 95 passengers.  The item that  most stands out on this type is the engines, they looked huge for a plane of this size when I was sitting next to it or when looking at it from the ground.  The fact that there were four of them, I wonder if that’s a case of German over engineering.

The seats were standard, although the overhead bins were smaller than expected when compared to those on the Boeing 737 or the Airbus A320 series.   One complaint I had about this plane was the air circulation system, on take off or landing, there was a funny whiny noise on my plane, I don’t know if this is typical of the class, but it sure was annoying.  Surprisingly, plane had a range of 3000 km, which made it on par with the A319 and just about 600 km less than the A320.  There were definitely fewer seats in comparison though, and it seems to be taking routes very similar to those handled by the A319.  Definitely a short haul, the trip from Hannover to Zurich lasted just over 90 minutes. 

Service wise, there was nothing outstanding on such a short haul flight, but, the milk chocolate that Swiss Air gives continues to win them little props, now if they were only dark chocolate. Ah, but one can only hope.

Long Haul on Swiss Air

I've flown Swiss Air before within continental Europe, but recently I took my first intercontinental flight with Swiss Airlines from San Francisco to Zurich.  It was a fairly standard experience, but learned a few interesting things about Swiss Air and their particular configuration of the A340.

Swiss Air started up the SF/Zurich route only recently, and to inaugurate the route, they had at least one of their planes painted up to resemble... well, to resemble something that you might see if you were really high.  It's a poster child of the counter revolution I suppose, whatever that means.  

 

I unfortunately did not fly on this graffiti in the sky and instead had a more sedated version with  the normal boring Swiss Air paint scheme.  I wonder how Lufthansa (owner of Swiss Air) ever let something like this paint scheme slip in.  The marketing department and the paint police must not have been paying attention when this scheme was proposed.  I wonder if they had any special add ins for this particular plane's in flight service.

Anyway, onto the flight itself.  For those who haven't flown on an A340 before, it has a 2-4-2 seating configuration.  In terms of seating, I was in a middle seat in economy, 26E to be exact.  Part of the reason I sat there was that there were no aisle or windows left.  But I had the foresight to check out the seating arrangement on seatguru.com, and found a few interesting tidbits.  

First, rows 24 through 27 are supposed to have a bit of an extra leg room compared to the seating in the back section.

Second, and more importantly, it was best to avoid A, D, G, K due to the presence of the in flight entertainment box.  This is important because that was  one big box and tremendously limited the amount of leg room available for anyone who wanted to stretch out.  So, if you're tall, or like me just want to be able to stretch your legs.  It's a decent idea to pick some other seats.  

The seat is pretty comfortable.  It had a very nice recline, it did have an older look and feel to it, but for someone who wants to take a nap, it was relatively comfortable.  I'm not saying anywhere near lie flat comfortable, but for economy class, it was certainly passable.

The in-flight system is AVOD (Audio Video On Demand) and is quite on par with some of the Asian airlines, and has all the nice options including a few Asian movies which I found entertaining.   The screen is 8 inch diagonal, which makes watching movies possible.  Nothing exciting for guys who fly Asian or certain European airlines regularly.  But compared to those on United flights or even the Lufthansa 747, this is a huge upgrade.  The one feature they have which would have been exciting if it worked was the nose camera and belly camera which would've shown the world outside.  I couldn't get it to work, what a pity.

The A340 doesn't have individual air flow control, which is a it annoying, but the cabin environment was pretty nice to start with, so not a big deal.

The economy class food was... well economy class, I had the vegetarian pasta.  That was ok, the brownie was a bit too sweet, but I didn't expect a toasted chocolate chip cookie in economy.  The wine was free, an upgrade from United, which no longer offers free alcohol on international flights in economy class.   My initial reaction was what the hell?  But that just goes to show you how much influence O'Leary has had on the airline industry, ancillary revenue... bah.  I suppose I should be happy United isn't charging a Euro a piece for the toilets yet.  One complaint about the orange juice, it was frozen, I mean literally there was a ton of ice in it.  I wish they at least defrosted the stuff.  But the milk chocolate was a nice touch.

Finally, being a mileage junkie, I jumped on the United mileage plus site, and sure enough I had additional Elite Qualifying miles as expected.  The downside however is that for some reason United doesn't like to give the bonus miles with Swiss, which is odd given that Swiss is owned by Lufthansa, and flying on Lufthansa gets you the bonus mileage.  How absolutely disappointing.  But oh well, that's an area of improvement I suppose.

Overall, I would rate the economy class on Swiss a solid B. 

Business Traveling 101

A background about myself.  

I live in the SF Bay area.  I've been flying for business since 2002, I used to be in sales and flew a lot within the US.  But then I became a product manager and now fly less frequently, but now I fly to international locations a bit more.  When I first started, I didn't cared which airline I flew on, I used Southwest, United, American, Delta, you name it, whatever was convenient.  Obviously, I was green and didn't know the advantage of trying to stay within a network. 

It took me a couple off years to finally get the idea that if I flew within one alliance network a lot, I'd accumulate miles and free travel a lot faster.  Yes, I became a mileage junkie, and over time, I became a Star Alliance mileage junkie.  My airline of choice:  United. 

Why United?  Well, United had a big hub in San Francisco, and flew to a lot of destinations from San Jose, or at least it did until the last few years. They also had pretty good access to the rest of the world through Star Alliance.  Finally, when I started to choose United specifically, they had started up their Economy Plus service.  A definite plus.  

I also enjoyed flying quite a bit, since I'm also a bit of an airplane enthusiast.  After a few years of business travel, I thought to myself why not share some of my experiences, and may be help some other travelers like myself take advantage of an increasingly complex airline industry.  So, with that, I'm off...