User:Keimzelle/Swissair

Founding years

On March 26th, 1931, "Swissair - Schweizerische Luftverkehr AG" ("Swissair - Swiss Aviation AG") was founded through the fusion of the airlines Ad Astra Aero (founded in 1919) and Balair (1925). The founding fathers were Balz Zimmermann and the Swiss aviation pioneer Walter Mittelholzer. In contrast to other airlines, it did not receive support from the government. The concise name "Swissair" was the proposal of Dr. Alphonse Ehinger, president of the directorial board of the Balair, despite "Swissair" was first deemed "unswiss". In the first operational year, 64 people were employed, among them 10 pilots, 7 radio operators and eight mechanics. In total, its planes offered 85 seats in total and the operation was maintained only during the summer, from March to October. The route network had a length of 4,203 kilometres (2,612 mi).

On April 17th, 1932 Swissair bought two Lockheed Orion airplanes and was the first European airline to use American planes. The Orion was the fastest commercial airplane at its time (among others, she had retractable gears) and was put to use on the "Express line" Zurich-Munich-Vienna. In 1933, the first trans-alpin route was introduced in 1933: Zurich-Milano.

For the first time in Europe, flight attendants were employed on the Curtiss Condor airplanes, beginning in 1934. Nelly Diener, first flight attendant of Europe, attained a world-famous status – but she los ther life after just 79 flights in a crash near Wurmlingen, Germany, on July 27th, 1934. The cause of the crash was material fatigue.

Just a few years later, in 1936, Douglas DC-2 airplanes were acquired and London was introduced to the route network. In 1937, the bigger Douglas DC-3 was bought. In the same year, both founding fathers died: Walter Mittelholzer during mountaineering in the Steiermark, Austria, and Balz Zimmermann succumbed to an infectious disease.

On August 27th, 1939, days before World War II broke out, the airspace over Germany and France was closed. Swissair was forced to suspend service to Amsterdam, Paris and London. Two days later, Swissair's aviation was closed completely. Of 180 employees, 131 had to server in the army, and in spite of the war, some routes were re-introduced, like those to Munich, Berlin, Rome and Barcelona. In 1940, an invasion of Switzerland was feared, and Swissair moved its operations to the Magadino plains in Ticino. The operations were suspended definitively in August 1944, when a Swissair DC-2 was destroyed in Stuttgart during an American bombing raid.

On July 30, 1945 Swissair was able to resume commercial aviation.

Ascension

The year 1947 saw the rise of the Aktienkapital (shareholder capital) to 20 Swiss Francs to enable long haul flights to New York, South Africa and South America with Douglas DC-4 aircraft. More modern Convair 240, the first Swissair planes with pressurized cabins, began to be used for short- and medium range flights. The first flight to New York via Shannon and Stephenville (Newfoundland) took place on May 2nd, 1947 and actually ended in Washington DC because a landing on New York's LaGuardia airport was not possible due to fog. Total flight time was 20 hours and 55 minutes.

The public, including the federal government, the states of Switzerland (Cantons), municipalities, the Swiss Federal Railways and the Swiss postal services took over 30.6 % of the shares and enabled the Swissair to get a credit of 15 millionSwiss Francs to purchase two Douglas DC-6 airplanes. By that act, the Swissair became the national flag carrier of Switzerland.

In 1948, the airport in Dübendorf, which served as the base of Swissair, was relocated to Zurich-Kloten. Military aviation continued in Dübendorf. The next year, Swissair plunged into a financial crisis because of a sudden devaluation of the British Pound because the flight fares, except the traffic to the United States, were calculated in the British currency. At that time, the traffic to England made up 40 % of Swissair's revenues.

In June 1950, Walter Berchtold, manager of the Swiss Federal Railwas, was elected into the directorial board of Swissair and served as the director of this board. Until 1971, like no other person before, he coined the corporate culture of Swissair. He grasped the importance of corporate image and corporate identity, and after the example of BOAC's "Speedbird", he introduced the arrow-shaped Swissair logo. Giving the flying personnel a distinct uniform was also an important point in his work. After the uniforms resembled the gray-blue ones of the Swiss army's Women's Auxiliary Corps, he introduced ones that were in a modish marine blue – Swissair put a veritable fashion competition of Europe's airlines into motion.

1952 was the year in which on northern trans-Atlantic routes the standardized one-class layout was changed into one with a first and a tourist class. The first class consisted of comfortable chairs in which one could sleep, given the name "Slumberettes". A short time later, those sleeping chairs were succeeded by beds, modeled after the U.S. Pullman railway wagons. Two adjacent seats were moved towards each other and formed a lower berth. The wall panel could be folded downwards, forming the upper berth in which the other person could sleep. One year later, the tourist class was introduced also on Europe flights.

The Swissair founded, together with the city of Basel, the charter company Balair in 1953, which is the reason why this company existed two times.

As the first European customer, Swissair bought the Douglas DC-7C which enabled it to perform non-stop flights to the United Stated. For shorter-range routes, the Convair Metropolitan was put into use.

In 1957, the Far East was introduced to the route network. Direct flights to Tokyo were established, with intermediate stops in Athens, Karachi, Bombay, Bangkok and Manila. In the same year, Swissair helped Aristoteles Onassis to form the new Greek airline, Olympic Airways.

While the competitors first looked at turboprop airplanes to replace their piston-engined craft, Swissair introduced jet airplanes directly. Together with SAS, Swissair bought Douglas DC-8 aircraft which were delivered after 1960, and for medium and short ranges the Sud Aviation Caravelle was purchased. The aircraft were maintained together with SAS, and also manuals for operation and maintenance were co-written.

As one of the few companies world-wide, Swissair then bought Convair Coronado aircraft for medium range duties. Although the machines did not fulfill the contractual specifications at first they were liked by employees and customers alike.

1966 saw the introduction of the Douglas DC-9. This type developed into the backbone of the short- and medium-range routes, and after convincing Douglas, on behalf of Swissair the Douglas Corporation offered a stretched variant, the DC-9-32. For the first time, Swissair was the launching customer of an aircraft type.

In 1971, Armin Baltenschweiler took over as the president of the directorial board and coined the enterprise for over two decades. In the same year, the first Boeing 747 Jumbo-Jet was acquired, and in the next year the first McDonnell Douglas DC-10 followed. Both types shaped the long-haul fleed until the 1990ies. Again, the specifications of both aircraft were developed in collaboration with the Scandinavian SAS. Also in 1972, Switzerland introduced a prohibition of night flights, which led to the cessation of cheaper night fares.

The second airline to offer service to the People's Republic of China was the Swissair, who introduced service to Beijing and Shanghai in 1975, in the same year Swissair was the launch customer for another aircraft type, the DC-9-51. In 1977, Swissair was the launch customer for the third DC-9 type, namely the DC-9-81 variant which is now called MD-80. Armin Baltenschwiler travelled to the meeting of McDonnel-Douglas' directorial board in St. Louis to convince them of further stretching the fuselage of the DC-9-51. Since then, Baltensweiler was called the "Father of the MD-80".

Time and again, in 1979 Swissair was the first company to order the Airbus A310-200 and the Jumbo-Jet variant with a stretched upper deck, the Boeing 747-300. Also the Fokker 100 short range aircraft and the three-engined MD-11 belong to the aircraft for which Swissair was the launch customer.

1983 saw the replacement of the DC-9 machines by DC-9-83 aircraft.

Since the 1960ies, Swissair was a world leader in the development of cargo reservation systems (CRS). PARS and CARIDO were examples for booking passenger seats and freight space.

«Fliegende Bank»

Der ab den 1960er Jahren stark wachsende Luftverkehr erlaubte es vielen Fluggesellschaften als Quasimonopolisten, hohe Gewinne zu erzielen. Insbesondere die Swissair profitierte in diesem Zeitraum von ihrem exzellenten Ruf als Qualitätsairline und der Möglichkeit, aufgrund der Schweizer Neutralität, exotische und daher lukrative Ziele wie Staaten in Afrika oder dem Nahen Osten anfliegen zu können. Ausserdem verhalf ihr ihre zentrale geographische Lage in der Mitte Europas dazu, Umsteigeverkehr zu generieren. Viele Auszeichnungen attestierten der Swissair Zuverlässigkeit, Sicherheit und Qualität. Sogar der grösste Swissair-Kritiker, der Aviatik-Journalist Sepp Moser, schrieb in einer Firmen-Chronik: «Die Swissair war unzweifelhaft eine der besten Fluggesellschaften der Welt, vielleicht die beste überhaupt».

Mit dem Beginn der Liberalisierung und Deregulierung des Flugverkehrs zu Beginn der 80er Jahre in den USA und später in Europa stieg der Kostendruck auf alle Fluggesellschaften. Der Swissair erwuchs zudem auch im Heimmarkt Konkurrenz mit der Gründung der Crossair im Jahre 1978. Die Swissair investierte in der Folge ihre hohen Liquiditätsreserven in Zukäufe und verlegte nach und nach einen Grossteil ihrer Geschäftsaktivitäten auf flugverwandte Aktivitäten wie die Flughafenabfertigung, das Catering, die Flugzeugwartung und das Duty-Free-Geschäft. Der Vorteil dieser Strategie bestand in der Diversifizierung der Aktivitäten und der Reduzierung des Risikos des reinen Luftfahrtgeschäfts; gewichtige Nachteile war die Vernachlässigung des Kerngeschäfts. Entsprechend erhielt die Swissair Ende der 80er Jahre den Beinamen «Die fliegende Bank», was in erster Linie auf den Umstand der vorhandenen stillen Reserven und der hohen Liquidität zurückzuführen war; in zweiter Linie aber auch eine symptomatische Bezeichnung für einen Konzern, der sich immer mehr mit Finanzmanagement statt mit Luftfahrt beschäftigte.

Concentration

In regard to the furthering liberalisation of Europe's airline market, Swissair focused more on commercial aviation and extended her partnerships. As the first European airline, Swissair signed in 1989 a cooperation treaty with Delta Air Lines and the Singapore Airlines to form the alliance "Global Excellence". In 1990, together with SAS, Austrian Airlines and Finnair, the "European Quality Alliance" was founded. The latter alliance was later renamed to the "Qualiflyer Group".

Because of the weak economy, the Gulf War and rising fuel costs, many airlines lost money in 1990. The ongoing liberalisation enforced the competition additionally, and Swissair lost 99 million Swiss Francs in the first half year, and the so Swissair was not able to pay dividends to shareholders – for the third time after 1951 and 1961. In the years 1991 and 1992 Swissair had to dissolve financial reserves to cushion the losses from the commercial aviation sector.

On January 1st, 1991, commercial aviation in Europe was completely liberalized and the existing capacities led to an aggressive competition among the airlines. In a national referendum on December 6th, 1992, the Swiss citizen rejected taking part in the European Economic Area, EEA. This referendum was a significant disservice to Swissair: Swissair planes were not allowed to take up passengers during intermediate landings, and Swissair was not allowed to offer routes or sections that lie in EEA member countries.

Like other airlines of smaller countries, Swissair now was under significant pressure. More and more national airlines affiliated themselves with airline alliances in order to maintain a world-wide market presence. But in order to be interesting for American alliance partners, an airline must have a critical size in terms of passenger numbers. To meet that goal, in 1993 a fusion of Swissair, KLM, SAS (each 30% of the new company) and Austrian Airlines was proposed. This project bore the name "Alcazar", after the Spanish term for "castle". But in various countries, this project was criticized. In Switzerland itself it was thought that the huge financial assets were too precious to merge Swissair with the other three airlines.