RE: Pic Of The Day-three great c/s!

I’ve had a quick check with my Swiss contacts, all the former SR Airbus’s in Zurich have the logos/titles covered, and Swiss have also now confirmed that their seven strong A319 fleet will be phased out as of the last quarter of 2004, to be replaced by Embraer ERJ195-200’s.

This follows former Crossair CEO Moritz Sutter’s declaration at the time that Crossair selected their new regional fleet that the A319 didn’t make financial sense without the economies of Scale of operating the bigger 320 family members.

My reading of that is that Swiss’ narrowbody Airbus fleet is no longer big enough to make the difference.

The 319 has a MTOW of 64tons, while the 195’s is 47 tons, with a capacity of only 18 pax less than the 319, and a sizeable saving in landing fees is anticipated with the Brazilian Aircraft.

And regarding Air Switzerland, they sacked 58 employees last month, 11 in their head office, and all crew based at BRN. They have apparently reached the conclusion that a profitable operation isn’t attainable from BRN, and they now wish to operate a Scheduled/Charter operation ex-ZRH. One of their DO328’s is to be returned to teh lessor, and the aircraft parked at BRN is to be transferred to ZRH (it’s HB-AEG), where HB-AEJ is already parked.

Nonetheless, Air Switzerland still hasn’t got an Operating Licence, and with only a few employees left, it would appear to rapidly be becoming little more than pie in the sky.