Trip Report - SWISS airlines LHR - ZRH - ATH in BUSINESS CLASS
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ก.ค. 2024
- This is a trip report of the first leg of my "epic" trip to Cairo and beyond... I travelled with Swiss airlines from London Heathrow's Terminal 2 (The Queen's terminal), past Windsor (The Queen's home) to Zurich. After a short connection involving a long walk, I then navigated past one of Swiss's finest jobsworths onto the connecting flight from Zurich to Athens.
Having recently been disappointed with British Airway's intra-Europe business class, I was keen to see whether the major continental carriers have a better offering. And from this small sample - Swiss certainly does!
This was part of a round trip ticket from London to Athens, and was the first leg of my quest to achieve Star Alliance Gold. One of the advantages of travelling with the Lurthansa group, is that it is quite easy to mix and match airlines within a booking so I was able to fly back to London on Lufthansa, so I was able to experience another competitor to BA on the one ticket.
⭐ #flightreview #Swissair #MattsPlanet ⭐
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⏰ Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
1:40 - Heathrow
5:27 - Flight 1 - LHR - ZRH
10:10 - Zurich
11:46 - Flight 2 - ZRH - ATH
14:55 - Athens
About 10 years ago I had my first transatlantic flight on Swiss Business class. It ruined me forever! The lounge at Zurich was amazing. Love your videos and they are super helpful !
Thanks Craig... Premium travel will do that to you!
Bavarian music for a Swiss take off. 😂 Matt you wild hog! Had me in tears!
Thanks - that's a nuance beyond my skillset.... Although I can certainly understand why Bavaria isn't Switzerland!
fantastic summary. We just booked a flight that has a Euro Business leg with Swiss, so we can rest assued they will be good! Thank you!
Fantastic - Swiss still stands as probably my favourite experience of all I've had since I started the channel.
New subsriber watching as many of your videos as i can love them.Thank you
Welcome - plenty in the back catalogue so enjoy!
Stumbled across your videos and subscribed. Good stuff. I think your compote was in fact Bircher muesli and when I had it, it was excellent. I was also a hooligan and opted for the champagne with breakfast 🥂😂 Keep up the good work ✈️🌎
Thanks Ben. I had a long day ahead of me so chose discretion over hooliganism on that occasion. Not my normal approach though!
Always enjoy Swiss Euro business, very similar experience to Matts every time. Plus, if you know the 'code phrase,' the very nice flight attendant fills a sick bags with chocolates to take away.
Don't leave me hanging!!! I can trade you the secret menu for In-N-Out burger for the Swiss secret word? Meet at the middle of London Bridge at midnight for the handover???
Thank you for this video. My first ever Swiss airlines route was lhr -zrh- fco. And I will say, I'm hooked on swiss. No meals on my flight tho, just the water bottle and the yummy chocolate. And yes, they are strict on luggages. Good thing, I checked in mine. Friendly crew staff. I will probably take the same route on my way to athens next year. Lhr - zrh - ath. I'm a new sub to your channel. Kind regards!
Thanks Clark and welcome. Swiss does stand out in the memory as having been a great experience.... So much so that I have the opportunity to go with them again in a few months and I think I might take it, even though there are better options out there!
Another great video 👍🏻
Thanks! Good to be back in the air...
Great to see you back in the air Matt and another great video. I fancy trying Swiss and this was really useful.
Cheers! A sample of 2 flights is not enough to draw deep conclusions, but the whole experience was pretty good. Well worth trying!
@@MattsPlanet good for a comparison on European short-haul though - seeing the food and lounge info etc.
Enjoyable report once again. We flew as a couple with Swiss short haul to Zurich then long haul and the same for the return. It was our first business class trip and we were spoilt on every Swiss Air flight, great service all round. Apparently Walker is a very common surname in Switzerland..who knew. Once the staff on the long haul section knew I liked beer, they kept asking me to try the many different Swiss ales onboard.. fantastic! The meals were also very good.
Cheers Mr Walker. That's really good to hear - there's been so much abbreviation of service lately its good to hear an airline acting normally (I am assuming your flights were recent!). Either way, Swiss is certainly up the list to experience on a long-haul route from this short haul experience.
Hi Matt. Have very much appreciated all your videos over the last few months (hello ITA Matrix :-)) but due to your grounding during COVID this is the first time I've ever seen you do an actual trip report. I have to say that, although you might say you are new to the game, your content and presentational style was every bit (or even more) engaging as those with more videos under their belts.
Really felt I was along with your for the trip. Fingers crossed for many more in the future!
Thanks for the kind words Julie! I've enjoyed getting out and enjoyed making videos about it... There is a learning curve - I've not been able to use any audio taken on a plane yet as the sound quality my equipment produces was awful - so it's all needed to be voice over so far, but that allows me to script things quite precisely and get across exactly what I wanted to say, so perhaps that's not a bad thing!
Thanks again for the support.
this is fantastic)
Thanks!
Great report Matt, with the usual peppering of humour (I especially enjoyed the swinging of the cat joke!) . I was originally supposed to fly a combination of LATAM/Lufthansa/Swiss in business last year, with a very interesting SCL-GRU-FRA-LHR-ZRH-GRU-SCL routing, but then the you-know-what struck and I had to get a refund, eventually catching the rather more boring Iberia flight to LHR via Madrid. I'll hopefully be able to fly them in future...
Edit: After your Premier Inn recommendation , I decided to check them out for an upcoming early morning trip to Helsinki with the family and managed to snag a family room for £29! Thank you!
That's great! Keen to do Swiss longhaul now... And arm yourself with the CityMapper app - or perhaps if its a family trip, the Uber app - and it'll be a fun experience!
Another great video Matt! We do enjoy the Bath Road Premier Inn as a start to our adventures, I can sit in the car park watching the flights come in all night 😂
Usually enjoy following this with some pod parking into T5, but it’s been far too long now.
Wife isn’t fussed on going anywhere while things are erm… ‘as they are’ - I might have to make a solo trip to get my fix 😂
It must be tempting to give the wife the slip and pop off somewhere... Although with that surname a cruise would be first choice surely?
@@MattsPlanet Haha, unfortunately not, I've always been an aviation guy. Many sneers of 'Ohhh you should be called Adam Airborne haw hawww' in school back in the day...
I've been meaning to get my own channel off the ground (ahem) at some point, been dilly-dallying with it for about 2 years now!
Very enjoyable review Matt, look forward to the next part. Have only flown Swiss infrequently short haul but like you impressed with the quality of service. I'm desperate to get back in the air and your quest for *A gold looks like fun (don't tell Greta)
Thanks Charlie - it was a very pleasant experience! Next part next week!
Flew Swiss long haul pre-pandemic from Prague via Zurich to Johannesburg. Much more pleasant atmosphere and great service compared to the mother company on the outbound trips. Followers probably won't believe me and yes I might be biased but SAA for all their financial woes was always my favourite with THE BEST and FRIENDLIEST service👌🇿🇦
Cheers Peet. SAA survived the pandemic I believe? Was some speculation they might not make it...
@@MattsPlanet They made it just, not yet flying long haul. One domestic route and some regional. Here's hoping to get to the UK and Europe with them next year🤞🤞
That was good trip report Matt, look forward to the return leg. How you manage to sort out all the different forms to fill in must have been headache, I know when we did the holiday to Cyprus it was bad enough plus the testing when back home it fairly adds to the cost if two of you travelling.
Cheers Peter. It was a chore to do all the paperwork. None of it was difficult, but working out what you needed was tricky. Almost no point doing research weeks before the trip as things change so much! My Greek form was thoroughly inspected, as you saw in the video...
I flew on Swiss Business class in July this year. Service and ground handling was very good. Flew on a airbus a330 so seats very comfortable and reclining into a fully flat bed. Food was very good too.
Quite keen on flying them long haul after this experience... Thanks for watching
First class (or should I say Business ) review Matt. I recently flew Swiss Economy (no champagne for me!) MAN-ZRH-LIS, specifically to try out the Swiss A220, returning with Lufthansa via FRA. The A220 on the MAN-ZRH leg was my first on this aircraft type and I agree with everyone's positive comments about the layout, comfort and service with Swiss. A far cry from Lufthansa's inferior product on the return leg. Looking forward to watching more of your content now that travel restrictions are gradually being lifted.
Thanks Roger! I mentioned in another comment that I initially planned a 220 from LCY but decided to go from LHR to show the full ground experience. I did get to experience a 220 with another airline though... Thanks for the kind words
Been on this flight a few times but only in coach with Swiss.....Just back from a direct flight in Business via BA to Athens, the Skyserv Aristotle Onassis Lounge coming back was not exactly a foodie orgasmatron experience
The new Aegean non-Schengen lounge was very good on my last visit and I'm optimistic the Schengen one will be too when it reopens...
Swiss' Flaghip lounges for all classes/tears (business, senator/gold, first) are in Terminal E. You can enjoy incredible tarmac views in a very elegant surrounding or outside on the terrace. If you have the time to go to terminal E, it's for sure worth it...
Thanks - I hope it won't be long before I'm back through Zurich as I really enjoyed the experience. And I'll try and schedule a decent layover in Terminal E!
Swiss has a great inflight product. They can be annoying at the gate in ZRH with the size and weight of one’s carry-on. So aggravating and as you said inconsistent.
Swiss does stand out in the memory as having been a good experience... Swiss precision when it comes to baggage shouldn't perhaps be a surprise!
I flew Swiss Zurich to Kiev last week on their new A220. Economy, I have to say if you get an opportunity it's a must, the leg room is insane and a great 2-3 layout. I also flew SAS and I now prefer Swiss or SAS for European flights due to economy comforts. To compare I had 2 Lufthansa flights around 3 hours each and was miserable compared the the gorgeous new cabins on Swiss A220!
So head onto matrix and find yourself a 220 flight, I guess it would be a good video review also. I know air France has a loaf of them ordered so it would be interesting if you could maybe get some comparisons going!
Thanks C C. I did initially consider a 220 out of LCY, but decided in the end to head to LHR to get the full ground experience even though it meant two A320s. But... I did travel on an A220 from another airline on this trip and it was a good experience...
@@MattsPlanet I'm 6"3. So Swiss surprised me with the insane leg room. Did your 220 trip have more leg room than the Swiss 320?
Is it just Swiss with the great layouts?
It was pretty decent and I'm 6'4". Won't give away the airline (although its probably easy to guess!!) but I was in business which was still 2-3 - no seats were left empty in the business cabin. I was lucky to not have anyone next to me in a 2.
@@MattsPlanet I believe Swiss in business on the A220 makes it 1-2 in the business "cabin", thanks for your replies.
@@MattsPlanet I was just watching your video on star alliance since I'm doing quite alot of flights with star alliances and decided to make an Aegean account, they are currently giving 1000 miles and tier miles for new accounts! Cheers for the videos.
Sorry to hear you are disabled Matt, this wasn’t obvious at all!
Thanks Jonathan - moderate to severe hearing loss. Sufficient to qualify for a free bus pass, but not a blue parking badge! Many people have it far worse than I do!
Had terrible time with Swiss having to change flights due to cancellation or Covid. Only got my refund recently sized correctly by directly engaging on twitter. Would not recommend in these changeable times. Flight service seems good but back office is not good.
Thanks - I may have been lucky... This trip was 8 flights on 4 different airlines and all went to plan and mostly to schedule. Fingers crossed - the days of mass cancellations are behind us...
Swiss not Swiss Air or Swiss International Airlines but never Swiss Air - please get it right!
Thanks Roman - I stand corrected! I still call Sri Lankan Air Lanka....
LuftHARNSA???
You say potato....
@@MattsPlanet Was going to say that!!!!
oufff. pass on this video,
Well thanks for taking the time to leave a comment at least!
Great video as always. I only flown Swiss once on their Fokker 100. Couldn't fault them for service.
Cheers. Really puts BA into perspective!