SWISS named best short-haul airline

Swiss International Air Lines has been selected “Airline of the Year for 2007” for short-haul services by the readers of ReiseBlick, beating no fewer than 61 competitors to capture the award. The accolade was presented this week at the joint award ceremony hosted by ReiseBlick and the travel trade publication Schweizer Touristik.

More than 1400 readers of ReiseBlick, a special-issue travel magazine published by Blick, Switzerland’s leading tabloid, participated in the survey, choosing SWISS as the best short-haul airline. “This award is especially valuable to us as it comes from our customers”, commented Rudolf Schumacher, SWISS Head of Sales & Marketing Switzerland. He accepted the award together with Harry Hohmeister, SWISS Chief Network & Distribution Officer, at the Hotel Zürichberg at the beginning of this week.

The ReiseBlick survey was aimed at all readers who booked an airline ticket during 2007. They were asked to rate flights they took last year on the basis of various criteria such as the quality and satisfaction of their check-in and inflight experience and sense of safety before and during the flight.

Other factors were staff friendliness, inflight entertainment, legroom, punctuality and value-for-money. In addition to the short-haul category, survey participants also rated long and medium-haul flights. SWISS finished a strong third in the latter category.