It is over! after I don’t know how many years Switzerland is selling a part of its history. Swiss International Airlines was sold to the german Lufthansa for a price somewhere between 70 and 460 mio. swiss Francs.
But its our own fault. 10 years ago, Swissair was one of the most renowned and prestigious Airlines in the World. And of course the Management knew that. In my opinion they were just too busy applauding themselves so they didn’t notice that the other airlines were catching up.
Swissair was a old fat lady which was slowly dying of her own weight. It was almost too late when the management finally recognised the need of immediate action. Maybe they could have made it.
And then it was the 11. of September 2001. The grounding and all the financial trouble coming with that finally broke the neck of Swissair.
It didn’t take long, and Swissair was bankrupt. Then the government came in. They took Crossair (a swiss regional airline), the leftovers from Swissair and a few billions Tax-Money, threw it all together and out came Swiss. Actually Swiss had the best circumstances to take off. 26 Airplanes, financial power in the shape of a few billion swiss francs, and most of all: NO LIABILITIES! But like the swiss people are, they wanted too much. The company was too big. The integration of Swissair and Crossair didn’t work out as planned, the unions successfully fought staff-reductions. So the Main Shareholders UBS, CS, Swiss Government and Kanton Zurich pumped even more money into the Airline.
Now, almost four years after swiss was born, it was sold to Lufthansa for an apple and an egg.
Well, goodbye Swiss. Goodbye swiss aviation era.
Maybe the government already has a new victim. We’ve still got Edelweiss-Air.