SWISS to serve San Francisco from summer 2010

San Francisco is to become SWISS’s latest long-haul destination. The new service, which will be introduced on 2 June 2010, will bring one of North America’s most important business and leisure destinations into the SWISS network; and with San Francisco growing steadily in importance for Swiss-based companies, the new service will further enhance Switzerland’s appeal as a business location.

The new flights will be operated using existing aircraft capacity, and will be added in parallel to frequency increases on routes to India, South America and Canada.

Thanks to its rigorous cost management and its ceaseless endeavours to enhance its efficiency, SWISS is one of the few air carriers which will be able to further expand their networks next year, too.

From June 2010 onwards, Switzerland’s airline will provide a six-times-weekly service between Zurich and San Francisco, one of the most important and strongest-growing markets in the whole of North America.    

“In adding San Francisco to our network, we are meeting a strong demand that we have heard and felt from many major companies and large numbers of leisure-travel customers,” says SWISS CEO Harry Hohmeister. “And it’s actions like this that show just how much drive and dynamism a healthy and competitive SWISS can provide for Switzerland, as a place to do business and as a tourist destination.”

San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area are the third-biggest air travel market in the USA (after New York and Los Angeles), and are home to the regional headquarters of several major Swiss corporations. At the same time, many large US companies based in the Bay Area have their European offices in Switzerland. San Francisco is also one of North America’s most popular tourist destinations, and is ranked fifth among the most-visited destinations between Switzerland and the USA.

The new SWISS San Francisco service will be operated with existing aircraft capacity. The two long-haul aircraft that have been temporarily withdrawn should be returned to service in spring 2010. As well as increasing frequencies to Delhi, Mumbai, São Paulo and Montreal, the additional capacity will be deployed on the new San Francisco route.

SWISS is also making full use of the opportunities generated by its membership of the Lufthansa Group to revise its present four-times-weekly services to Riyadh and Jeddah. Travellers from Switzerland now enjoy daily direct Lufthansa service via Frankfurt to both destinations.