Swissair

If you stood at the fence in Zurich-Kloten in the 1980s or 1990s, you couldn’t get past Swissair: MD-11s and Boeing 747s on long-haul, MD-81s and later Airbus narrowbodies in Europe, all with the Swiss cross on the tail. Swissair was more than an airline – it was regarded as part of Swiss identity. All the greater was the shock when the fleet stayed on the ground on October 2, 2001. This page shows you the history, the fleet and the features you can use to classify Swissair photos from your archive cleanly.

Swissair at a glance

Swissair was Switzerland’s national airline and flew from 1931 to 2002. It emerged from the merger of two older companies: the Zurich-based Ad Astra Aero and the Basel-based Balair. The merger was sealed in March 1931 and backdated to January 1. The merchant Balz Zimmermann and the aviation pioneer Walter Mittelholzer are regarded as the formative figures.

At the beginning Swissair was privately financed. In 1947 the federal government, the SBB (Swiss Federal Railways), the PTT (the postal and telecommunications service), as well as cantons and municipalities took a combined stake of a good 30 percent – from then on Swissair counted as a national airline. Its headquarters were in Kloten right at Zurich Airport; further hubs were Geneva and EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse.

In its best decades Swissair stood for punctuality, refined service and a modern fleet. Because the company was also very soundly financed for a long time and had plenty of liquidity, it was often called the “flying bank.” In 71 years Swissair carried more than 260 million passengers.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code SR: appeared in the flight number, on tickets and departure boards – for example on the last scheduled flight SR145.
• ICAO code SWR: appeared in the air traffic control flight plan.
• Callsign SWISSAIR: how the crews identified themselves on the radio.

One detail matters for your archive: the successor Swiss took over the ICAO code SWR. But it flies with the IATA code LX and the callsign “SWISS.” So if an old note says SWR, only the date helps you assign the right airline. How IATA and ICAO codes work in general is explained in the guide to IATA and ICAO codes.

From the DC-2 to the MD-11: the history

The first years were small: at the start the fleet comprised 13 aircraft with a combined 86 seats. With modern US types like the Douglas DC-2 in the mid-1930s and the DC-3 from 1937, Swissair caught up quickly. In 1934 it became the first European airline to employ flight attendants.

After the Second World War, long-haul began. With the DC-4 it crossed the Atlantic for the first time in 1947, from 1951 the DC-6B flew to New York, and from 1956 the DC-7C. In Europe, Convair propeller aircraft flew, including the CV-440 Metropolitan.

The jet age arrived in 1960. On May 21, 1960, the Sud Aviation Caravelle flew its first scheduled service from Zurich to London, and a few days later, on May 30, the Douglas DC-8 took off for New York. From 1962 the Convair CV-990 joined the fleet – Swissair gave it the name “Coronado,” which later became the nickname of the entire type. By 1968 the fleet had been fully converted to jets.

The 1970s brought the widebodies: in 1971 the first Boeing 747-200B arrived, and from 1972 the DC-10-30 followed. After that Swissair became launch customer of an important type: in 1977 it was the first airline to order the DC-9-81, the later MD-81. The type shaped the European routes for around two decades.

For the 50th anniversary in 1981, Swissair gave itself a new look – with the lowercase titles it kept until the end. In the 1980s and 1990s the Airbus A310, Boeing 747-300, Fokker 100 and finally the MD-11 were added.

The jet fleet at a glance

The following table shows the most important jet types with their approximate years of service at Swissair. It is a guide for your archive, not a complete list of every individual aircraft.

Type	At Swissair	Use	Spotter tip
Sud Aviation Caravelle	from 1960	Europe	First jet in scheduled service, engines at the tail
Douglas DC-8	from 1960	Long-haul	Four-engine jet of the first jet generation
Convair CV-990 Coronado	1962 to c. 1975	Long-haul	One example stands in the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne
Douglas DC-9	1966–1988	Europe	Replaced by the Fokker 100 in 1988
Boeing 747-200B	1971–1984	Long-haul	Switzerland’s first jumbo
DC-10-30	1972–1992	Long-haul	Trijet, replaced by the MD-11 from 1991
MD-81	c. 1980–1998	Europe	Swissair was launch customer of the DC-9-81
Airbus A310	1983–2000	Medium- and long-haul	Twinjet widebody of the first Airbus generation
Boeing 747-300 / -300M	1983–2000	Long-haul	Stretched upper deck, also as a combi
MD-11	1991–2002	Long-haul	Successor to the DC-10, winglets at the wing tips
Airbus A320 / A321	1995–2002	Europe	Foundation of Swiss’s later short-haul fleet
Airbus A319	1996–2002	Europe	Shortest version of the family
Airbus A330-200	1998–2002	Long-haul	Passed to Swiss in 2002

At the end, at the transition to Swiss in spring 2002, the fleet consisted mainly of A319s, A320s, A321s, A330-200s and MD-11s. The differences within the Airbus family are explained in the guide Telling the A319, A320 and A321 apart.

MD-11 or DC-10? How to tell Swissair’s trijets apart

Archive photos from Zurich in particular often show a trijet with the Swiss cross. Whether it is a DC-10-30 or an MD-11, a few details tell you – both come from McDonnell Douglas.

The winglets are the most reliable feature, because you can usually spot them even in small or blurry pictures. If you want to dig deeper, you will find the differences on the type pages for the DC-10 and the MD-11.

How to recognize Swissair

The basic pattern stayed remarkably stable over decades. Since 1950 the aircraft carried a white roof and a shiny metallic belly, separated by a cheatline at window height. On the tail was the Swiss cross. For the 1981 anniversary, Swissair kept the white and metal but refreshed the design: the name now appeared in lowercase as “swissair” on the fuselage.

The christening names also help with identification. From 1950 the aircraft were named after cantons, and later more place names were added – for example “Vaud” for the MD-11 HB-IWF. A legible name on the nose is therefore a good clue when the registration is missing from the photo. You will find more on Swiss registrations in the article on Swiss HB registrations.

The Hunter strategy: expansion on credit

In the 1990s Swissair came under pressure. In 1992 Switzerland rejected membership in the European Economic Area, so access to the liberalized European air transport market remained difficult. A merger with KLM, SAS and Austrian Airlines under the project name “Alcazar” failed in 1993. Swissair did have alliances – from 1989 Global Excellence with Delta and Singapore Airlines, plus the European Quality Alliance and later Atlantic Excellence with Delta and Sabena – but no strong group behind it.

In 1997 the holding company SAirGroup was created. Under group CEO Philippe Bruggisser and advised by McKinsey, it bet on the so-called Hunter strategy: instead of subordinating itself to a big alliance, Swissair wanted to buy partners itself and build a network of its own. As early as 1995 Swissair had acquired 49.5 percent of the Belgian Sabena. Stakes followed in LTU (49.9 percent), Air Littoral, Volare, Air Europe, AOM, Air Liberté, LOT and Portugália, among others. From 1998 the Qualiflyer Group served as the umbrella.

The problem: many of these airlines were losing money. For 2000 the SAirGroup reported a group loss of around 2.9 billion Swiss francs. In January 2001 Bruggisser was dismissed, in March the board of directors resigned, and the former Nestlé finance chief Mario Corti took over the leadership.

The grounding of October 2, 2001

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, demand in air transport collapsed. For the weakened SAirGroup it was too much. On October 1, 2001, the project “Phoenix” became known: the banks UBS and Credit Suisse took over the SAirGroup’s Crossair shares, and Crossair was to become the basis of a new airline.

At the same time the SAirGroup announced a moratorium on payments to creditors. On October 2, fuel suppliers refused to refuel, and UBS did not extend the credit line – the liquidity was no longer enough. In the afternoon all flight operations were halted – aircraft stayed on the ground worldwide, and thousands of passengers and crews were stranded. This day went down in Swiss history as the grounding.

Three days later, on October 5, 2001, Swissair gradually resumed operations – made possible by an emergency loan of 450 million Swiss francs from the federal government. Until the end of March 2002 Swissair continued flying on a reduced scale. The last scheduled flight, SR145, arrived in Zurich from São Paulo on Easter Monday, April 1, 2002. You can read more about comparable collapses in the overview of major airline failures in Europe.

Swissair flight 111

The worst accident of the late years struck Swissair on September 2, 1998. The MD-11 HB-IWF “Vaud” was en route as flight SR111 from New York to Geneva when a fire broke out above the cockpit. The crew tried to reach Halifax, but the aircraft crashed into the sea off the coast of Nova Scotia near Peggy’s Cove. All 229 people on board died. The investigation traced the fire to cable defects, among them in the wiring of the in-flight entertainment system, and led to changes in insulation materials in aircraft.

Swissair today: successor, museum, archive

There are no flying Swissair aircraft anymore. On the basis of the former regional subsidiary Crossair, Swiss International Air Lines was created in 2002. It took over 26 long-haul aircraft (MD-11 and A330) and 26 medium-haul aircraft (A319, A320, A321) from Swissair. In 2005 Lufthansa took a stake in Swiss, and in 2007 it acquired the airline completely – today Swiss is part of the Lufthansa Group and a member of Star Alliance. In 2009 Swiss bought the trademark rights to “Swissair” from the bankruptcy estate.

If you want to see Swissair history live, go to the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne. A Convair CV-990 Coronado in Swissair colors stands there – one of the best-known exhibits in the aviation hall. Otherwise Swissair is mainly a subject for archives, photo databases and collectors. That is exactly why it pays to label old pictures well: many registrations moved to Swiss or abroad after 2002, and without a date an attribution is difficult. Tips for classifying old types are in the article Recognizing vintage aircraft in the sky, and the airline’s design also appears in the overview of legendary airline liveries.

Common mix-ups

• Mistaking Swiss for Swissair – Swiss is the successor since 2002, with IATA LX instead of SR and a fully white fuselage.
• Logging Crossair as Swissair – the regional subsidiary flew under its own name, with its own codes and its own look.
• Automatically assigning SWR in the logbook to Swissair – the ICAO code has belonged to Swiss since 2002.
• Mixing up Balair – the name was borne both by a predecessor from 1925 and later by a Swissair charter subsidiary.
• Treating the DC-10 and MD-11 as the same – the winglets show you the MD-11.
• Thinking Sabena was a Swissair subsidiary – Swissair held 49.5 percent; Sabena remained a Belgian airline of its own.

Conclusion

For over seven decades Swissair was Switzerland’s flying showpiece – with an early-modernized fleet, the Swiss cross on the tail and bases in Zurich, Geneva and Basel. The Hunter strategy and the consequences of September 11 led to the grounding on October 2, 2001 and to the end in spring 2002. For spotters Swissair lives on in museums and archives today, and anyone who notes registration, type and date cleanly turns old pictures into valuable entries.