Swiss International Air Lines is increasing seat numbers on its narrowbodies and launching several routes in an apparent offensive against Etihad Airways' local regional partner Darwin Airline.
Wholly owned Lufthansa Group subsidiary Swiss is fitting its Airbus A320s and A321s with new seats and rearranging the aircraft's aft galleys and lavatory areas to allow installation of two and three additional seat rows to the A320s and A321s respectively.
Lufthansa introduced a slim short-haul seat in December 2010, enabling the German carrier to increase capacity and lower costs on its European network. The Recaro-made seat was rolled out across the narrowbody fleets of Lufthansa and another wholly owned group subsidiary, Austrian Airlines, in 2011. Swiss's single-aisle Airbus aircraft were not included in the cabin revamp at the time. The Zurich-based airline says now that its new seat is based on Lufthansa's short-haul seat but includes a number of further developments.
Work on the first aircraft is to begin in November. Flightglobal's Ascend Fleets database shows the carrier has 36 CFM International CFM56-powered A320-family aircraft: 23 A320s, eight A321s, and five A319s. But the A319s are not included in the current refurbishment scheme as Swiss is planning to phase them out.
The "new-look" cabin is accompanied with an in-flight catering initiative focused on locally sourced food, the airline says.
The seat and service changes are part of a short-haul revamp dubbed "next-generation airline of Switzerland", which is intended to put "an even firmer focus" on the country's air travel needs, says Swiss. The airline will add a raft of routes from its home base in Zurich as part of its summer 2015 schedule, and will "supplement its traditional hub concept with a new point-to-point system", it says.
Lufthansa Group is preparing its short-haul subsidiary Eurowings for an 2015 relaunch as a pan-European low-cost carrier with an all-A320 fleet. Basel will be the first base outside Germany for the Dusseldorf-based airline. But more bases are to be added, with a particular focus on Lufthansa Group's markets in Austria and Switzerland.
New routes will be opened from Zurich to destinations in north and southeast Europe – namely Gothenburg, Helsinki, Krakow, Ljubljana, Riga, Sarajevo, Sofia and Zagreb – in March. As part of the same network push, Swiss will also start flights from its main base to Bari, Bilbao, Dresden, Graz, Leipzig, Naples, Porto and Toulouse.
Swiss will be directly competing with Darwin on the Dresden and Leipzig routes, and operate 16 flights a week between Geneva and regional gateway Lugano, where Darwin is based.
Darwin has operated flights for Swiss between Lugano and Zurich in the past. But earlier this year, Swiss terminated the partnership after Etihad acquired a one-third shareholding in the Saab 2000 operator in late 2013. Darwin has since been rebranded Etihad Regional and has introduced ATR 72s to grow its operations within the Gulf carrier's network of part-owned airlines.
In March, Swiss will also start seasonal routes from Zurich to Brindisi, Izmir, Malta, Palermo, Santiago de Compostela and Thessaloniki.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
