Now they have a new one, just called "Swiss".
Kinda like Czechoslovakia being split and one part now called "Czech".
Swiss without air; Czech without a mate - get it? Oh, No!
LN in DC
--- In BoundaryPoint@y..., "Andrew T. Patton" <andrew@A...> wrote:
> 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@A...