Swiss International Air Lines is continuing to boost its Air-Rail links – with the announcement of a third service between Zurich and Geneva.
Swiss International Airlines Airbus A340-300 – Image,Economy Class and Beyond
The new service will offer ten trains a day with Swiss flight numbers attached to them. It will operate between Geneva’s Cornavin central station and Zurich Airport, operated Swiss Federal Railways (SBB). It will allow Western Switzerland to connect with the Swiss’s Zurich hub to offer e connections with the intercontinental and European.
During the pandemic, Swiss has reduced its operation to four flights a day
Selected SBB trains between Geneva Cornavin and Zurich Airport will be assigned SWISS flight numbers. Travel on these trains to the SWISS hub in Zurich is included in the flight ticket. The new facility also extends to any SWISS travellers commencing their rail journey from Geneva Airport (Cointrin) station.
Swiss and SBB currently operations two other Airtrain services, with Basel-Zurich Airport and Lugano-Zurich Airport being offered.
In Quotes
SWISS CEO Thomas Klüh said
“Keeping Western Switzerland closely connected with our global Zurich-based flight network is extremely important to us,”
“In extending these Airtrain services to Geneva, we are offering our customers even more choice in planning their travels with SWISS. We’re also responding to a growing demand among our guests for greater combinability of their air and rail travel options.”
SBB CEO Vincent Ducrot said
“The new Geneva-Zurich Airtrain connects the Romandie with German-speaking Switzerland and the train with the plane,”
“And as a public transport company, that is something we are pleased and proud to do.”
Available to book
With 10 options a day, this Airtrain link is available to book for those who need it, either via the Swiss site or via a travel agent – offering 14 connections a day between Zurich and Geneva in around 2 hours 40 minutes
The Airtrain is also available to travellers on SWISS-codeshare Edelweiss flights for those who need it.
An intermodal state of mind
For some domestic routes, air travel is either not sustainable, or at least can be seen as a waste of precious resources – where the work could be offloaded to another company to deliver a “greener” form of travel.
Intermodal travel (using one mode of travel) is common for a lot of people (eg, taking one form of travel to a transit point, then switching to another form of travel – once I travelled by coach, took a ferry, took another coach, then a train, and then two aircraft to Canada), reducing the need for a car, but getting to where I needed to be.
And maybe going multi-modal will help in the longer run.
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Makes sense, although I’m a bit surprised that Swiss doesn’t offer the trains all the way through to Geneva airport if desired to allow connections between the two airports as well as trains to Geneva airport for Edelweiss and Swiss flights from there.