Crossair

If you stood at Basel, Zurich, Lugano or Bern in the 1980s and 1990s, you often heard Crossair before you saw it: the drone of the Saab turboprops, the typical whisper of the four-engine Jumbolinos. The Basel regional airline was more than a Swissair subsidiary. It was launch customer for several aircraft types, gave them nicknames of its own and ended up as the foundation of Swiss. This page shows you how an air taxi company became one of Europe’s defining regional airlines, which aircraft it flew and how to recognize Crossair with confidence in old photos.

Crossair at a glance

Crossair was a Swiss regional airline based in Basel that flew scheduled service from 1979 to 2002. Its roots go back to 1975, when Moritz Suter and Peter Kalt founded Business-Flyers Basel AG – a small company for air taxi flights. In November 1978 it became “Crossair, AG für europäischen Regionalluftverkehr” (Crossair, Inc. for European Regional Air Traffic).

The concept was new for Switzerland at the time: small, modern aircraft on routes that were too thin for the big jets of Swissair. The home airport was EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg, with strong secondary bases in Zurich, Lugano, Geneva and Bern.

Over the years the competitor became a subsidiary of Swissair. After Swissair’s collapse in autumn 2001, Crossair served as the framework for a new Swiss airline: from March 31, 2002 it flew as Swiss International Air Lines. If you book a Swiss flight with an LX flight number today, you are using a code that comes from Crossair.

The history in stages

The road to scheduled service was hard. Swissair effectively held the monopoly on international scheduled routes in Switzerland, and the authorities were reluctant to grant licenses to smaller companies. Crossair applied for several individual licenses from Zurich at the end of 1978 and in April 1979 received a time-limited permit for three routes – with aircraft of no more than 30 seats.

An interesting point for context: Swissair was long torn. It initially rejected a stake in 1979 but offered a commercial partnership – the cooperation agreement was signed in July 1979. In June 1988 Swissair then came in with 38 percent of the capital, and in the 1990s it became the majority shareholder. That made Crossair a full part of the Swissair group – with its own brand and its own character.

Codes and callsigns

• IATA code LX: appeared in the flight number, on tickets and on departure boards. Swiss still uses it today.
• ICAO code CRX: used by air traffic control in the flight plan, for example on the accident flights CRX 498 and CRX 3597.
• Callsign CROSSAIR: this is how crews called in on the radio.

For your logbook that means: an LX flight number before 2002 belongs to Crossair, an LX flight number after that to Swiss. Swiss did take over the IATA code, but switched to SWR for the ICAO code – the abbreviation of the former Swissair. In old flight data you will therefore only find Crossair under CRX.

Launch customer on principle

Hardly any regional airline helped launch as many aircraft types as Crossair. That had advantages – Crossair could bring its wishes in directly – but also brought trouble with delivery delays and teething problems.

• Metro III: Crossair ordered the further developed Metroliner as early as February 1980, before its first flight. The first aircraft arrived in 1981, late.
• Saab 340: On October 2, 1980, Crossair signed a purchase contract for the Saab-Fairchild 340, which it called the “Cityliner”, as the first airline in the world. In 1988 it was again the first customer for the improved Saab 340B.
• Saab 2000: Crossair was also launch customer for the stretched, much faster successor. The type entered service in 1994.
• Avro RJ85: Crossair put the RJ85 into service in 1993 as the first airline.
• Embraer 170: With the large order of 1999, Crossair gave the impetus for the new Embraer jet family – but never received an aircraft itself.

The Crossair fleet

The fleet grew from single-engine light aircraft to regional jets with around 100 seats. Manufacturers were mainly Saab, BAE Systems and its predecessors, McDonnell Douglas and Embraer. The numbers in the table refer to the entire period of service with Crossair, not to a particular date.

Type	At Crossair	Role	Spotter tip
Fairchild Swearingen Metro	from 1979, Metro II and Metro III	First scheduled aircraft	Registration HB-LL..
Saab 340	from 1984, versions A and B	“Cityliner”, backbone of the 1980s	HB-AH.. (340A), HB-AK.. (340B)
Fokker 50	1990 to 1995, five aircraft	Stopgap until the Saab 2000	Six-blade propellers, 46 seats
BAe 146-200	from 1990, initially three used aircraft	Crossair’s first jets	Four engines, high wing
BAe 146-300	two leased aircraft until 1996	Basel–Paris and stopgap	Longest fuselage of the family
Avro RJ85	from 1993, four aircraft	“Jumbolino”, for example from Lugano	First operator worldwide
Avro RJ100	from October 1995	Replacement for the Swissair Fokker 100	HB-IX.. and HB-IY..
Saab 2000	1994 to 2002, 34 in total	“Concordino”	HB-IZ.. and HB-IY..
MD-83	from autumn 1995, twelve at the end	Leisure routes and charter	Part of the MD-80 family, HB-IN.., HB-IS.., HB-IU..
Embraer ERJ 145	from March 2000, 25 in total	Longer regional routes	HB-JA.., the last ones already in Swiss colors

The turboprops were the heart of the airline. If you want to tell the slim Saab 340 from the stretched Saab 2000 in old photos, look at fuselage length and propellers: the Saab 2000 is clearly longer and has six-blade propellers. More tips on propeller aircraft are in the guide Telling turboprops apart.

Concordino: the fast Saab 2000

Moritz Suter wanted the fastest turboprop for around 50 passengers. Saab built it – largely to Crossair’s wishes. Because of its high cruising speed, the airline called the type the “Concordino”, as a little brother of the Concorde. The market saw it differently: in the 1990s many airlines preferred regional jets, and Saab ended production after just 63 aircraft. With 34 aircraft, Crossair was by far the largest operator.

Jumbolino: the whisper jet for short runways

The four-engine BAe 146 was a perfect fit for the short runways of Lugano and Bern: steep approach, short takeoff, little noise. Crossair called it the “Jumbolino”. Crossair flew the further development, the Avro RJ85, as the first airline from 1993, and from 1995 the RJ100 joined and replaced the Fokker 100s of Swissair. A piece of pioneering history also goes back to this type: from March 1992 Crossair was the first airline to fly the BAe 146-200 to London City Airport. The Jumbolinos kept flying at Swiss until August 2017.

How to recognize Crossair

The look changed several times. The design of the early years was replaced in the early 1990s by a look with a European theme. For the 25th anniversary in 2000 came the last big look: a white fuselage with the “CROSSAIR” titles across its full height in dark blue, plus a silver tail with a red field and a white cross. The ERJ 145s came from the factory in this livery, and older types were gradually repainted.

The registrations are a good help. The Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation assigned the airline contiguous series. On the jets the “X” stands out – HB-IX.. for the first BAe 146s and Avro RJs.

Special liveries with cult status

Crossair was known for eye-catching advertising paint jobs. The MD-83 HB-IUH flew from 1996 to 2000 in bright red with large McDonald’s titles for a tour operator – known in the scene as the “McPlane”. The Saab 2000 HB-IZK advertised the musical “The Phantom of the Opera” in Basel in black and white in 1995. And the MD-83 HB-ISX congratulated the Swedish ski racer Anja Pärson on her world championship title in 2001. For the colorful designs on Swiss airlines today, see the article on special liveries from Austria and Switzerland.

Hubs and routes

At the start, Crossair flew from Zurich to Nuremberg, Innsbruck and Klagenfurt, and destinations such as Luxembourg and Hanover soon followed. Later Lugano and Basel became important: from Lugano the airline connected Ticino with the rest of Switzerland and with destinations abroad. Bern became a typical Jumbolino destination because of its short runway.

From 1998 Crossair built its own hub in Basel under the name “Eurocross”, with several connecting banks a day. That also included the French subsidiary Crossair Europe, which flew Saab 340Bs from the French sector of EuroAirport. With the MD-83s, Crossair also flew vacation flights from 1995, including from Zurich to Palma de Mallorca, Valencia and Las Palmas.

Looking beyond the borders was typical for Crossair. It worked closely with Air Dolomiti from the mid-1990s, and the Italians at times flew ATR 42s on Crossair routes. Crossair held a stake in Friedrichshafen-based Delta Air – later Deutsche BA – and both operated Saab 340s and later Saab 2000s.

The accidents of 2000 and 2001

Two serious accidents cast a shadow over the last years. On January 10, 2000, the Saab 340B HB-AKK, flying as CRX 498 from Zurich to Dresden, took off. Shortly after takeoff it entered a steep right-hand spiral and crashed near Nassenwil. All ten people on board died.

On November 24, 2001, the Avro RJ100 HB-IXM was flying as CRX 3597 from Berlin Tegel to Zurich. On a nonprecision approach to runway 28, the crew continued the descent below minimum altitude, the aircraft clipped trees and hit the ground near Bassersdorf. 24 of the 33 occupants died.

The end: conversion into Swiss

On October 2, 2001, the Swissair aircraft stayed on the ground; the parent company was insolvent. In the following months Swissair and Crossair kept flying in parallel while banks, the federal government and business planned a new national airline. As a basis they chose not Swissair but Crossair, which was still operating and had a modern regional fleet.

The story of the new airline continues in the entry on Swiss, and that of the former parent at Swissair. Swiss has belonged to the Lufthansa Group since 2005. How the Swissair collapse compares with other cases is covered in the article on major airline failures in Europe.

Crossair in everyday spotting today

You will no longer see a Crossair aircraft in scheduled service. For your logbook, the airline is an archive topic – but a rewarding one. If you photographed at Basel, Zurich or Lugano between 1980 and 2002, you probably have several Crossair types in the can. With registration, type, location and date, these become clean entries.

Tracing where the aircraft ended up is exciting. After their time at Crossair and Swiss, the Saab 2000s were spread among other operators, including Swiss airlines such as Darwin Airline and SkyWork Airlines as well as Eastern Airways. Some Saab 2000s later also went to Loganair, and several ERJ 145s flew at Aeromexico Connect. The best way to follow an aircraft’s life story is through the serial number, as the guide How old is this aircraft? shows.

You can still visit the places of Crossair history. In Zurich, the Butzenbüel and Spectator Terrace B offer good views of the traffic of its successor Swiss, and in Geneva the observation deck. An overview of Zurich as a spotting destination is in the Zurich plane spotting guide.

Common mix-ups

• Equating Crossair with Swissair – Crossair was an airline in its own right with its own codes and its own look, even as a Swissair subsidiary.
• Assigning LX flights before 2002 to Swiss – the code belonged to Crossair then.
• Confusing the Saab 340 and Saab 2000 – the Saab 2000 is clearly longer and has six-blade propellers.
• Taking every Jumbolino for an RJ100 – Crossair flew BAe 146-200, BAe 146-300, Avro RJ85 and RJ100. The fuselage length decides, as described in the guide Recognizing regional jets.
• Dating the founding to 1978 – the name Crossair dates from 1978, the company itself from 1975.
• Logging Crossair Europe as Crossair – the subsidiary flew with French registrations from the French part of EuroAirport.

Conclusion

Crossair shows how much a regional airline can move. In a good two decades, a Basel air taxi company became a carrier that influenced aircraft manufacturers, helped shape entire types with the Saab 340 and Saab 2000, and in the end formed the basis of today’s Swiss national airline. If you are interested in the history of regional aviation, you will find more background in the article Regional airlines in Europe.