The pick-up of streamlined inter-modal travel continues, with SWISS and the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) expanding their Flugzug (Air-Train) partnerships.
SWISS and SBB conclude strategic partnership to expand their intermodal product – Image, Swiss
Currently, Flugzug operates between Zurich Airport and the SBB stations in Basel and Lugano.
This will be expanded to further routes in the course of next year, with Bern, Lucerne, Andermatt, Interlaken and Zermatt in line to gain FlugZug status. In addition, Bellinzona, Locarno and Ticino will join the network in time.
According to Swiss, the new partnership is intended to promote rail as an integrated transport mode to take air travellers to and from Zurich Airport. At the same time, the present Flugzug product will be made more flexible, to give customers a greater choice of Flugzug services and align these as closely as possible with their air connections.
In quotes
SWISS Chief Executive Officer Thomas Klühr.
“This intensified collaboration between ourselves and SBB will enable travellers to make optimum use of both air and rail transport wherever it makes sense to do so in economic and ecological terms,”
“By expanding these c services, we can provide our customers all over Switzerland with the best possible rail connections to and from our global route network. And at the same time, we can offer our international guests a smoother and simpler journey to their Swiss destination.”
Andreas Meyer, Chief Executive Officer of SBB, states
“Switzerland and the tourism sector will both benefit from this strategic partnership,”
“We want to make it as easy as possible for the customer to buy their ticket from, say, Hong Kong to Interlaken in a single booking process. This will both simplify their planning and help protect the environment.”
Enhancing connectivity
SWISS and SBB will also be striving to steadily further enhance their inter-modal travel product – by offering more direct trains, for instance, or in their handling of any operating irregularities. They also plan to integrate seat reservations for the rail journey and are considering the option to drop-off baggage at Swiss rail stations.
And connectivity is the name of the game. Like the Lufthansa AirTrain/DB and the planned KLM/Thayles service, airlines are trying to make inter-modal connections the first choice by streamlining connections.
On these shorter routes where flying is not effective or not possible, using existing connectivity and integrating into booking systems makes sense.
And ensuring the connectivity persists in the case of something going wrong will be key to ensuring it’s a success.
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