Andreas Spaeth - airwaysnews.com
Switzerland is a very aviation-minded country – there is no other way to explain the huge commotion at Zurich’s Kloten airport last Friday: The open air rooftop terrace was specially opened at 07:00 for an event that the outgoing Swiss CEO Harry Hohmeister describes as “a historical day for Switzerland, a symbol of our first step into the future.”
It was the arrival of the first Boeing 777-300ER for the Swiss national carrier, having emerged from the ashes of former Swissair and now firmly established as a solid money-maker within the Lufthansa Group. But still it was fascinating to watch how a simple Boeing 777-300ER, a mainstay of many of today’s long-haul fleets with over 580 in service worldwide, could mobilize thousands of spectators to flock to the airport early on an initially rainy January morning.
There was quite a bit of pushing and shoving when the aircraft finally appeared in the skies over runway 16/34 shortly after 9am local time, escorted by two F/A-18 fighter jets of the Swiss Air Force. “Our pilots flying the delivery flight from Everett’s Paine Field to Zurich are themselves former air force pilots, and the fighter pilots are friends of theirs, so it was a natural gesture for them to escort the new flagship and do some aerial photography with their reconnaissance cameras during a flyby of the famous Matterhorn peak in the Swiss Alps,” Captain Ola Hansson, the Swiss Fleet Chief for the Boeing 777, told AirwaysNews. Finally at 9:14 local time, after an estimated flight time of nine hours and 55 minutes, but with all the extra loops amounted to a total time of 10 hours and 21 minutes, the new “flagship of Switzerland”, as it was referred to, touched down at its new home base.
This first aircraft, a Boeing 777-3DE(ER), (MSN: 44582 / LN: 1363), is registered HB-JNA. Decals of hundreds of Swiss employees in different sizes were applied to the fuselage before the aircraft was due to embark on pilot training flights early this week.
From February 8th there will be two weeks of commercial crew training flights on scheduled short haul services around Europe, “we need our pilots to accumulate landings”, says Ola Hansson. These flights are bookable on Swiss.com. The most densely flown route will be Zurich to Frankfurt, on some days several times daily. The easiest way to spot them on the booking page is the indication “Operated by Swiss Global Air Lines”, which now operates the 777s as well as the Avros and soon the Bombardier CSeries from this summer under its own AOC. The other AOC is “Swiss International Air Lines”, operating the Airbus fleet. Swiss Global operates with lower labor costs, although Swiss won’t reveal by how much cheaper it produces.
Swiss will receive five more Boeing 777s of an initial order of nine by the end of August, replacing the outdated Airbus A340-300s, of which Swiss operates 15 to date. The main reason for buying the 777s, that were only ordered in early 2013, was “that we got them relatively cheaply and relatively quickly”, discloses Hansson. “The Boeing 787 is too small for us and the Airbus A350 would have only been available in 2019, but we needed new aircraft now.” Two more 777s will join the Swiss fleet in 2017 and one in 2018. “I hope it will be more 777s”, says Harry Hohmeister, who after 11 years at the helm of Swiss now returns to Lufthansa’s headquarters top ranks in Frankfurt. Lufthansa itself is the launch customer for the 777-9, with the first of 34 firm orders expected to join the fleet by 2020.
The cabin of the Swiss-777 seats a total of 340 passengers and is a leap forward in comparison to the interiors of the Airbus A340-300s it is replacing. The eight individual cabins in First Class boast the largest video screens in the industry measuring 32 inches and electro-mechanical window shades, serving all three windows per seat at once.
The 62 seats in Business Class are configured either 1-2-2 or 2-2-1, creating a total of 12 single “throne seats” with extra storage space and armrests-cum-tables on both sides of the seat. The current Swiss Business offering has been refined and enhanced, with more storage space and better privacy, also for the first time introducing three-point seat belts instead of an airbag in the lap belt. The 270 Economy Class seats boast more recline, bigger 11-inch touchscreens and USB and audio ports for every passenger.
The biggest novelty of the aircraft, however, is the Panasonic eX connect IFE system, with Swiss as the first major European carrier now allowing voice calls on its 777 fleet. “This function will be disabled after the inflight service on night flights”, says Frank Maier, Head of Product and Services at Swiss. “We will test it for one year but expect to keep it on with not too many people using it, but it is something you have to offer as an airline these days.” Online access will be offered in three different data packages, 20MB costing 9 Swiss Francs (ca. US$ 8.82), 50MB going for 19 Francs and 120MB costing 39 Francs, a model much more expensive for the passenger usually than flat-fee models like Lufthansa utilizes.
Swiss will deploy its first Boeing 777 on regular long haul flights from Zurich to New York JFK from February 21 four times weekly, then it will switch to daily Montréal services on March 27. For this route, the aircraft is actually too big for commercial reasons, “but we are forced to do it because of the required ETOPS training”, reveals Ola Hansson. In mid-April, the 777s will be finally starting to take over Hong Kong services, a route well suited for the aircraft, followed by Los Angeles (June), Bangkok (July) and then San Francisco and Sao Paulo. But it will probably never again create such a stir as during its premiere on this damp Friday morning in January in Zurich.
Swiss Receives a New Flagship: The Boeing 777-300ER
No comments:
Post a Comment