After a rather bumpy trip from Paris to Lugano which took us 24 hours... yes, twenty four hours... SWISS airlines got a piece of my mind for extremely poor standard of handling flight cancellations and delays!
As loyal and very happy SWISS traveller over the past five decades I grew up with SwissAir and followed on to SWISS. Stepping onto a SWISS flight always feels like coming home before you even arrived in Switzerland.
Booking a family weekend return flight from Paris to Lugano (via Zürich) we were informed a week beforehand that the return LUG -ZHR flight was cancelled without further explanation. This meant Expat Boy needed to cut his weekend short in order to take the train from Lugano to Zürich to catch his connection back to Paris.
However, things took a turn for the worse on departure day. First the plane Paris to Zürich was delayed and then cancelled making us lose the connecting flight and leaving us stranded in Paris.
We waited in line at the boarding gate for information, another line at the check-in counter only to be told that the officers were only booking hotel rooms and that tickets need to be rebooked with the group ticket desk. Another queue! Finally we waited for our luggage until four hours later we caught the shuttle to the hotel.... compliments of SWISS. I was NOT trekking back into town at midnight to hit the road at the crack of dawn on Saturday with all of Paris departing for the holiday week.
A good company should make sure the service level is assured in every airport. In Paris, the cancelled flight, the absence of a responsible in charge to direct the stranded passengers, the lack of information on how to get the luggage back... all was a huge disappointment to the usual SWISS standards. It was 20:30 and no SWISS representative was around leading.
Most unfortunately we were then further blocked in Zürich the next day due to bad weather conditions and experienced a two hour delay before we finally headed towards the Ticino. It took us exactly 24 hours to get from Paris to Lugano!
SWISS should be Swiss! Unfortunately it seems SWISS is becoming just another company and it hurts to see this happening!
Waiting, waiting, waiting and waiting....
... the morning after... is that our plane from Paris to Zürich?
Made it to Zürich... and the bets are on for the Zürich-Lugano flight!
Yesss... we are nearly there. Circling over Lugano.
24 hours to get from Paris to Lugano... a new record!
It could have been worse: Milano Malpensa was on strike!!!
