Swiss International Air Lines

Flew from Zurich to Mumbai and Mumbai to Zurich and to San Francisco. Had the worst experience with their airport staff who were very rude, arrogant and non- courteous. Since I started in US with United, I had regular 21″ carry on which went through to Mumbai without a hitch. However, on return, they weighed my carry on bags and forced me to check in one carry on as it weighed over 8 Kilo, which I was not aware of, coming from USA and they refused to reciprocate their codeshare partner’s rules. I paid $109 for the carry on although they did not apply this rule to all passengers. At Zurich, opposite happened and they stopped my other carry on from taking into cabin on the grounds that it is big, even though it came in the cabin from Mumbai. Again, all my protests did not matter and when I pointed out that they are letting most other bigger carry on bags go but mine and this is discrimination, I was told by their staff members that if I do not keep quiet they will call the police. That much for democracy and applying rules. At the end, they stopped total three bags whileletseveral dozens go through. I had to check in my second carry on. Well, I won’t fly Swiss again after this.

Swiss used to be a good airline. I’ve been flying with them over 10 years as a senator (gold) member. However, ever since Lufthansa became the owners the service levels have been slowly declining. Prices have increased while customer service is almost in the toilet…

The latest revelations are almost anti-customer and anti-business. Trying to change (re-book) flexible tickets online is randomly possible, but mostly seems to fail “due to technical issues”. Calling the service desk can take anything from 15-45 minutes just to get a flight re-booked. And now it seems possible to book a flight online, for Swiss to take payment and report the booking was processed ok, but report a “technical error” which means you see and receive nothing … but have to call the service desk to get the details …

For an airline which really charges a premium price, they seem intent on testing the limits of customer loyalty. Huge shame, but no wonder EasyJet is taking their business.

I flew from Singapore to Zurich on an A380. I have been flying many long haul flights over the past 5 years. I can simply say this has been the worst company I have ever flown with and will not be a repeat customer.

We boarded the plane and took until 20+ minutes after take off before the “entertainment” system worked. I was unable to even view the screen properly when the chair in-front was reclined due to the plastic film they cover the screens with. The film choice, Oceans 11 from 1960 I kid you not amongst other dated films. The plane itself made me feel like I was stepping back into the 1980’s.

As for the service, when I asked for water I was told by the hostess I could go to the back and get some from the kitchen area. When I asked for a snack later (after the extremely plain meal was served) I was asked again would I like to go to the back because I must want to stretch my legs. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Rubbish was not cleared for over 40 minutes

The seats were very cramped and uncomfortable and the aircon was far too cold.

As for Zurich airport, clean but cold and only a single coffee shop.

Will gladly pay more $ to fly another airline.

I will never fly Swiss Air again. The flight crew were lazy and didn’t care a bit about customers. Our entertainment didn’t work for the first three hours of a long leg from Zurich to Shanghai. The screen resolution was poor on all the planes we flew and movie choice was old and out of date. The food was appalling on every leg. The seat was broken in front of us on the long leg from Singapore to Zurich which meant the seat was constantly reclined and made eating and watching any entertainment difficult throughout the flight.
The leg from Zurich to Shanghai was made particularity unpleasant with people shouting in Mandarin the whole flight. These people had moved from their assigned seats before we’d even taken off. The crew did nothing to ask them to be quiet while the whole rest of the passengers were trying to sleep on the night flight. Pushing the crew button overhead was resolutely ignored so don’t bother. Very very disappointing.

Arrived before the last boarding was due but was denied permission to board. I had my check-in and boarding pass but the lady that seemed to be in charge not only refused to serve me but was also very umprofessional, to the point where she wouldn’t let me finish my senteces (she kept saying “no more boardings for this fligh. No. More.” and i was trying to tell her that the pannel says the flight’s gate is still open for it but could not say 2 words without her talking over me and she refused to even check if anything could be done so I would get on my flight. She was furthermore talking slow and loud, the voice tone one would normally use when talking to a partially deaf or havily retarded individual). She was rude, stubborn, and terrible to deal with. I could not be refunded for my roundtrip ticket either and had to buy another one. This lady almost cost me my only week off to spend with the family for the whole year ON HOLIDAYS. I am disappointed with the airline beyond words.

I fly from the geneva airport and back very often but I will never use their services again.