Swissair’s Last Day in the Air

Swissair did not vanish in a slow, dignified fade. It stopped. On 2 October 2001, the airline became insolvent and all its aircraft were grounded, while thousands of passengers around the world found themselves stranded. What had long been presented as a symbol of Swiss reliability ended as a logistical and financial mess, with the usual cast of actors: a risky expansion strategy, political hesitation, and a credit that never came through.

For Gabriela Good and Ernst Frei, Swissair was never just an employer. Frei spent more than 14,000 hours in the cockpits of Swissair aircraft. Good worked for the company as a flight attendant for six years. Both describe an airline that carried the image of Switzerland into the world, and both still speak of it with a loyalty that is rare in an industry built on schedules, margins and the occasional emergency landing.

Good remembers the company as a privilege to work for. She also recalls a workplace that, by her account, treated men and women equally and paid them the same. That may sound ordinary now, but in corporate Switzerland it was evidently still a point worth remembering. Frei says Swissair stood for the country’s image abroad, and that the crews understood they were part of something larger than a commercial operation.

The decline came after the liberalisation of European aviation changed the rules of the game. Because Switzerland did not join the EEA, many routes in Europe could only be served together with European partners. From the 1990s onwards, Swissair reacted by expanding, buying other airlines and taking on heavy debt. The so-called Hunter strategy was meant to build strength. Instead, it pushed the SAir Group close to collapse.

Then came 11 September 2001, a series of management failures, slow federal authorities and, at the decisive moment, no loan from UBS chief Marcel Ospel. Good says the end simply pulled the ground from under her feet. Only a few weeks earlier, she had appeared as a hostess at Swissair’s general assembly and sensed that something was wrong, though not that the end would arrive with such speed.

Frei learned of the insolvency in Johannesburg. After some hesitation, he was ordered to fly back, apparently because the company feared the aircraft might be seized; the fuel had not yet been paid for. As Zürich came into view, he saw the parked aircraft lined up one after another. He later landed the last Swissair machine in Zürich-Kloten.

Life went on, as it does, but without much enthusiasm for forgetting. Good later flew for Swiss for another 20 years. Frei moved on after some Crossair flights, became a ship captain and later flew the historic Super Constellation. Yet Swissair remained present for both of them. Good says it never really leaves you. Frei puts it more bluntly: it cannot be erased.

That is the strange afterlife of a company that once seemed part of the national furniture. The aircraft are gone, the balance sheets were settled long ago, and the brand became history. But in the memories of those who worked there, Swissair still flies, if only at the level of recollection. For a country fond of orderly systems, that is a rather inconvenient reminder.

Written by Sandy van Dongen sandy.vandongen@alpineweekly.com