Swiss continues to fly high at City

The carrier which flies out of City Airport has just increased the number of flights to Zurich to nine a day and has no plans for reducing services.

It’s a far cry from recent reports which suggest airlines will be reducing services by 60 million seats this winter.

General manager for the UK and Ireland at Swiss Gregor Koncilja said: “Swiss is part of Lufthansa group, a very strong brand, and we are in the Star Alliance.

“This means overheads are not a problem for us.

“We’ve done our homework in the last couple of years to prepare for difficulties and in the first half of this year have 11 per cent profit margins.�

Air France CityJet is closing its flights to Zurich from London City next month and Swiss has decided to seize the initiative by increasing its hold on the route from eight flights each way to nine.

Now its only rival from the Royal Docks airport to the Swiss city is British Airways, which offers five daily flights each way.

With its flights running at 80 per cent capacity, Swiss sees Zurich continuing to be a popular destination both for leisure and business customers.

Mr Koncilja said: “We have a very strong, loyal customer base in the city area, especially with financial institutions. The banks of London are still very strong.

“Zurich is very popular. It is one of the greenest cities in the whole of Europe.

“It has high standards of living. And it’s somewhere you can recover from a long business day by having a swim in the lake.�

The destination is also popular with skiers being just an hour and a half from the slopes.

Zurich has also become a hotspot for transfers, with Istanbul becoming very popular with business travellers, especially from City Airport the company claims.