SWISS: New fleet flagship Boeing 777 to enter service during the winter schedules

SWISS’s new fleet flagship, the Boeing 777-300ER, will enter revenue service in the course of the coming 2015/16 winter schedules. The new long-haul twinjet will be deployed on services between Zurich and New York from early 2016. The start of the winter schedules also sees more frequencies added to the Zurich-São Paulo and Zurich-Miami routes. And SWISS will be further expanding its offer from Geneva, with additional seasonal services to Russian and Portuguese destinations.

Boeing 777-300ER to New York

The Boeing 777-300ER, SWISS’s new fleet flagship, will enter revenue service in early 2016. The new long-haul twinjet will be deployed on Zurich-New York services from February onwards.

SWISS will also be increasing frequencies on its Zurich-São Paulo and Zurich-Miami routes in its winter schedules, in response to rising demand. From December onwards travellers will enjoy ten weekly services to São Paulo and 14 to Miami.

The Hub+ portfolio, which was introduced in spring of this year to provide Switzerland with better connections to its neighbouring countries, will also be adjusted to meet winter-season demand. These adjustments see 20 of the 22 summer-schedule destinations retained, including Dresden, Helsinki, Gothenburg, Krakow and Sofia. And vacation destinations Bilbao, Izmir, Malta and Porto will also continue to be served.

More flights from Geneva to Russia and Portugal

SWISS will be modifying its portfolio of destinations from Geneva, too, for the winter timetable period, to better meet seasonal customer needs. Frequencies to Portugal, for instance, will be increased, with Lisbon and Porto each receiving five weekly flights. Service to Russia will also be intensified: Moscow will have 14 weekly frequencies from Geneva during the winter timetable period; and St. Petersburg will receive one weekly Geneva flight rising to three during peak times (29 December to 9 January and 18 to 27 February).

SWISS offers 105 destinations (79 European and 26 intercontinental) in 49 countries in its 2015/16 winter timetable. The new schedules are valid from 25 October 2015 to 26 March 2016, and are available at swiss.com.

More Edelweiss flights to sunny destinations

SWISS will also offer services to various leisure destinations all over the world in the 2015/16 winter season together with its sister carrier Edelweiss. In addition to flights to such dream destinations as the Maldives, Cape Town or Phuket, Edelweiss will be operating its first-ever service to Cuba’s capital Havana – two weekly flights – in the winter period, too. Edelweiss’s European frequencies will also be expanded, with Palma de Mallorca, Larnaca, Antalya and Catania all receiving several flights a week during the winter months, and more frequencies offered to Pristina and Skopje, too.

Lufthansa expanding its flight programme for private travellers

Lufthansa is launching its own new programme of intercontinental flights aimed specifically at leisure travellers in the new winter timetable period. Tampa (Florida) is the first such new vacation destination to be added to the Lufthansa network. And it should soon be followed by Nairobi (Kenya) at the end of October, Cancun (Mexico, largely as charter flights), Male (the Maldives) and Mauritius in early December and Panama City (Panama) in March of next year. The new destinations should make Lufthansa even more attractive for vacationers and other private travellers.

There’s also good news for all Airbus A380 fans: Lufthansa will be introducing its fleet flagship onto the Frankfurt-Hong Kong route this winter. Lufthansa will further be launching a new 28-times-weekly service between Frankfurt and Luxembourg, and raising its current Munich-Luxembourg service to 24 weekly flights. Cape Town will also see its non-stop services to and from the Munich hub restored.

Lufthansa customers will also be offered two new destinations on the Canary Islands in the cold winter months. A new Munich-Fuerteventura service will be provided from 25 October, and a new service to Tenerife from 31 October. And for those in search of a truly new wintertime destination, Lufthansa will be operating its first-ever non-stop service between Munich and Kittilä, Finland’s biggest and best-known winter sports resort, located 170 kilometres within the Arctic Circle, every Saturday from 19 December.