The first Swiss airline to fly into Cape Town, Edelweiss Air offers a nonstop service to Zürich at 20h45 on Tuesday and Friday nights, arriving there at the civilised hour of 9.50 next morning. The return flights are by daylight. At present the service is intended to be seasonal since the airline mostly serves the leisure market, bringing tourists from Italy, France and Germany as well as from Switzerland. But this could change if there is sufficient demand from South African passengers bound for the northern hemisphere summer to justify a year-round service, especially as Cape Town seems to be succeeding in extending the tourist season and is attracting delegates to international conferences in the winter months.
Zürich is near enough to the borders of neighbouring countries to attract passengers from them, particularly to and from northern Italy, and Cape Town has a large Italian community who have to take indirect flights to Italy all year round. In addition to flights to other countries in Europe and the UK, Zürich Airport has an adjoining railway station with trains for other European cities.
Edelweiss started life as a charter airline belonging to travel company Kuoni, but was taken over by German airline Lufthansa in 2008 and since then has been converted into a scheduled airline serving medium-haul and long-haul routes. Lufthansa also owns Swiss International Airline, which flies from Johannesburg to Zürich. Swiss serves mostly business travellers and Edelweiss is aimed at the leisure market but also carries some business travellers and is likely to attract some from Cape Town who dislike changing planes in Johannesburg. Its modern Airbus A 330-200 aircraft are configured in two classes. Business class seats have 122cm of legroom and recline by up to 28cm. At this stage they have no lie-flat beds but business development manager Michael Trestl told me they will be installed. Economy passengers have 79cm of legroom and their seats recline by 15cm.
Cape Town is only one of several new routes served by the airline. Others include Vancouver and Calgary in Canada, Alicante in Spain – and, from the new year, Tampa in Florida, US.
It’s several years since I was last in Zürich but it is a pleasant stopover well worth a visit, although the exchange rate makes it expensive for South Africans. Switzerland is, of course, not part of the European Union. Zürich’s reputation as a banking centre made me expect a city dominated by office buildings. But, on the contrary, it is an interesting historical town with a strong Germanic flavour and a huge lake used for boating and a ferry you can take to a village at the end. It has quaint inns, restaurants serving Zürich specialities and – although this is not well known – Swiss wines are excellent. The Swiss have been making wine since they were part of the Roman empire – long before the Huguenots existed. Most of it is consumed in Switzerland, not exported.
Emirates, which flies to Cape Town twice a day, is offering cut-price fares to destinations in Europe, the US, the Middle East and Far East from now until Wednesday, December 21, for travel between Friday, January 20, and Thursday, February 16. Fares inclusive of taxes to Dublin, London, Manchester, Rome, Venice, Geneva, Munich, Zürich, Athens, St Petersburg and Madrid are from R3 777. These are cheaper than fares to the Middle East, which are from R3 843 to Bahrain, Beirut, Doha, Kuwait, Muscat, Yemen, Jeddah and Medina. Fares to Jakarta, Guan-gzhou and Tokyo are from R4 007, and to New York, Houston, Los Angeles and San Francisco from R6 050.
The United Arab Emirates’ other airline, Etihad, which has been used by Capetonians for flights to Ireland, is withdrawing from Cape Town to beef up its services from Johannesburg. But Emirates has recently added Dublin to its list of destinations served from its home airport of Dubai, so there will be no need for Capetonians bound for Ireland by way of the Middle East to go to Johannesburg. Other indirect routes to Dublin, of course, are by way of Amsterdam with KLM or London with British Airways or SAA, all of which fly from Cape Town all year round, or by way of London with Virgin Atlantic Airways, whose flights to Cape Town are seasonal.
It is by no means certain that Lufthansa will sell British Midland International to British Airways. as seemed likely. Virgin Atlantic Airways has put in a bid for it and is carrying out a due diligence study of its financial situation. This would give Virgin more arrival and departure slots at London’s Heathrow Airport and would obviously suit Lufthansa better than strengthening BA, one of its main rivals. - Weekend Argus