You can disregard info on Swissair as they are bankrupt. There was an
interesting discussion about this airport on usenet. It seems that it
has some of the shortest "flights" in the world. Some planes shift
from Basel to Mulhouse so that they are considered internal flights in
the Schengan area. The plane does not move in the "flight" but the
depart point changes. The real shortest flight that actual has a
takeoff and landing is 2 minutes long and is between Westray and Papa
Westray in the Orkney Islands of Scotland.
---
January 10, 1999
PRACTICAL TRAVELER / By ROGER COLLIS
Euro Airport as Regional Hub
Swissair has introduced nonstop service from Newark to Basel,
Switzerland, welcome news to travelers who can now make fast
connections through a small, user-friendly airport to provincial
cities like Bilbao, Nuremberg, Dresden, Toulouse, Nice,
Marseilles, Valencia, Friedrichshafen and Rostock.
There are also flights to major cities such as London and Berlin,
but often to business airports like London City and Tempelhof, a
short cab ride to the city center. In addition, there are
connections to megahubs like Heathrow, Charles de Gaulle in
Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt -- if that's where you need to go.
The six-times-weekly service, which began Dec. 17, is by Swissair
Airbus 310 (42 business-class and 143 economy seats) as a
code-share with Delta Airlines and Crossair -- Swissair's
regional subsidiary -- which is developing an extensive
hub-and-spoke network through Basel.
Newark-Basel is the first of a dozen similar "long, thin"
services (that is, with sparse traffic) that will be operated in
Crossair colors on routes such as Basel-Buenos Aires/Atlanta/
Mexico City/Charlotte, N.C. - what I call regional long-haul routes.
Cross air ultimately plans to acquire a long-haul fleet of upgraded
Boeing 767's to serve these routes.
Book a flight to Basel or Mulhouse, France, and you'll arrive at
the same airport -- Euro Airport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg -- right
at the border separating Switzerland, France and Germany in the
Upper Rhine Valley.
Four million people live within 60 minutes of the airport, which
is 6.3 miles (10 kilometers) from Basel; 16 miles (26 kilometers)
from Mulhouse and 46 miles (75 kilometers) from Freiburg in the
southwestern corner of Germany. Zurich will be 45 minutes away
when a new highway is completed.
Euro Airport, 50 years old but in the process of expansion, will
have served nearly three million passengers in 1998 (around 40
percent each from France and Switzerland and 20 percent from
Germany) with 12 airlines currently offering more than 45
scheduled flights to 92 destinations in 25 countries. Such
carriers as Air France, British Airways, Sabena, KLM and
Lufthansa serve 36 cities in 20 countries from Euro Airport.
Bypassing the Megahubs
Crossair plans to develop Euro Airport as a regional hub for
people who wish to travel between, say, Nuremberg and Bilbao, or
Dresden and Toulouse, thus saving time and avoiding the misery of
changing planes at a megahub like Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt,
London, Paris or Zurich, which give priority to long-haul
connections.
Crossair's "Euro Cross" is a new strategy that provides more than
520 connections a day between 40 cities through Euro Airport with
an expected connecting time of 20 minutes. The carrier aims to
have 1,000 daily connections linking 48 European destinations by
next year, including regional services from Euro Airport to such
destinations as Warsaw, Budapest, Athens, Ankara, Bologna,
Stockholm, Copenhagen, Glasgow, Oporto, Trieste and Moscow, as
well as long-haul routes to North America and Asia.
Euro Cross flights arrive and depart in four coordinated waves:
early in the morning, midday, afternoon and evening, enabling
people traveling to and from most destinations in Europe to get
there and back the same day.
For example, Toulouse-Vienna via Euro Cross is 2 hours 15 minutes
faster than via Zurich; Amsterdam-Bilbao is 2 hours faster than
via Paris; and Friedrichshafen-Birmingham is 1 hour 30 minutes
faster than connecting in Frankfurt.
"If someone could fly point-to-point from Frankfurt to Palma at a
suitable time, he would never go via Euro Cross, or if someone in
Nuremberg could save time by flying to Bordeaux via Frankfurt, he
would not use Euro Cross," says Moritz Suter, president and chief
executive of Crossair. "But people will take Euro Cross because
it is faster and easier in many cases."
Convenience at a Price
Crossair flies to 82 European destinations (plus around 25 routes
on behalf of Swissair) with a fleet of 80 aircraft consisting of
33-seat Saab 340 turboprops, 50-seat Saab 2000 turboprops and
97-seat Avro RJ jets. The company carried 4.7 million passengers
in 1997 -- 19 percent more than the previous year -- and made a
net profit of about $28 million.
Small planes operating frequent flights on lightly traveled
routes and relatively high fares are the key ingredients to
Crossair's success.
Round-trip fares from Euro Airport to London City, a 15-minute
cab ride from the City, or Heathrow are $1,085 in business class,
$845 in economy and $185 discounted fare.
Crossair is what you might call a "high frills" carrier. Riding
the 33-seat Saab 340 Cityliner, for example, is the next best
thing to a private plane. On short flights you're served regional
specialties with wines to match, or open sandwiches of smoked
salmon and cheese with Champagne from a real bottle.
The triangle where the frontiers of Switzerland, France and
Germany intersect on the Rhine is the crossroads of ancient
north-south and east-west trading routes, in use long before the
nations were created.
Alsace changed hands many times between France and Germany over
the years -- belonging to Germany from 1871 to 1918 and again
from 1940 to
1944.
From the balcony of Mr. Suter's office at the airport, you can
see the city of Basel to the south, St. Louis in France to the
north, and beyond that the German city of Weil-am-Rhein on the
other side of the Rhine and to the northeast Lörrach, in Germany.
Mulhouse is to the northeast; to the north is Mulheim in Germany
and Strasbourg in France.
A Historical Crossroads
The region had its genesis as a trading hub in 1226 when Bishop
von Thun of Basel mortgaged his entire fortune to build the first
bridge on the Rhine -- the tollhouse still stands in the center
of the old bridge.
Merchant caravans from Scandinavia and northern Germany would
come down through the Rhine Valley, crossing the river at Basel
on their way south via the Alps to Italy; the silk caravans from
China came up from the Balkans, crossing the Rhine here, and
continuing on to Paris and London.
In the mid-19th century, railway engineers followed the old
caravan routes: the night express from Stockholm to Palermo still
crosses the Rhine at Basel -- one of the most important railway
hubs in central Europe.
Germany and France have train stations on Swiss ground in the
center of Basel. Modern highways follow the old routes from north
to south and west to east, still crossing the Rhine at Basel.
The Euro Airport is an intercultural experience. It is built on
French soil and run by a kind of public joint venture between
France and Switzerland with board members from each country along
with representatives from Germany -- a fast-growing sector of the
airport's business.
There is a French-Swiss frontier within the airport, which
apparently can be shifted depending on how many departure gates
are needed on either side.
The Eurobar straddles the frontier; the same bartender serves on
both sides. The Airport Grill offers entirely different menus on
the French and Swiss sides, with the food coming from the same
kitchen. A three-course dinner with wine could cost $55 a person
on the Swiss side, a third less on the French side.
Whether you use the French or Swiss side depends, of course, on
where you're heading. (Each country has its own immigration and
customs channels.) But it may be a good idea to compare taxi and
car rental prices in French and Swiss francs. There are separate
parking lots on each side.
If you're going to Germany, you can come out either side. But the
airport bus to Freiburg goes from the French exit. And a French
taxi is likely to cost a lot less than a Swiss taxi. You may like
the idea of taking a French taxi to Germany or Switzerland.
--
Andrew T. Patton WWW:
http://www.AndrewPatton.com
Fairfax, VA, USA E-Mail:
andrew@...