Swiss International Airlines was established in 2001, and this was the time when their earlier Switzerland flag carrier, Swissair went bankrupt.
The biggest creditors of Swissair UBS and Credit Suisse sold some assets of the airline to Crossair, their regional counterpart and they were under one holding, both Crossair and Swissair as SairGroup.
Later, Crossair altered its name to Swiss and started on March 31, 2002 its operations officially.
Lufthansa, in 2005 confirmed to takes over Swiss and acquired 11% stake in the newly formed company Air Trust to hold Swiss shares and the takeover was completed by the year 2007.
Swiss International Airlines is the leading Switzerland airline with its prime hub at Zurich Kloten Airport.
This airline has a subsidiary regional airline as well in the name ‘Swiss European Air Lines’. They have their own air operator certificate operating non-Airbus fleet. It is headquartered in Basel and is a subsidiary of Lufthansa, the German airline.
However, Lufthansa pursues to maintain Swiss International Airlines as an individual brand. At present Swiss International flights cover worldwide destinations including 42 European and 27 international destinations.
Among the European destinations, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Kosovo, Bulgaria, Belgium, France, Italy, Norway, Spain, UK, Sweden, and many more are covered, besides flying to US, Brazil and Canada. In, Africa it serves South Africa, Tanzania, Egypt, Kenya and Cameroon.
It also covers majority parts of India and is viewed as the best international airlines in India.
Swiss International in Asia has scheduled flights to Thailand, China, Cyprus, Japan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel, Turkey and Oman. It also flies to Mumbai and Delhi in India.
Moreover, new addition of routes are being planned to operate daily services to Shanghai from Zurich. However, in 2009 Swiss international flights to Singapore were terminated and this service will be scheduled with Singapore Airlines, the Star Alliance partner to fly between Singapore and Zurich. In 2007,
it was voted by Germany readers of Business Traveler Magazine for categories such as ground services, lounges, cabin comfort and cabin crew.
The code-sharing partners are Air Canada, Air Malta, Croatia Airlines, Air India, Brussels Airlines, Lufthansa Italia, Egypt Air, Thai Airways, Qatar Airways, Ukraine International Airlines, Singapore Airlines, United Airlines, Tam Airlines, U.S. Airways and Edelweiss Air.
