Qualiflyer - Very nice SWISS experience today

Just wanted to compliment SWISS "publicly" for doing a nice thing today: I booked some special advance fare tix from GVA-LHR on the internet (99CHF, but why are taxes another48CHF?!) and mistakenly chose a 7:30 am return flight instead of the more humane 9:50 flight. I emailed SWISS to explain the error and to hope they could "correct" the record and an hour later got a very polite phone call from SWISS saying they had changed the flight for me. I'm only a lowly TC Silver member, so didn't expect much. Kudos to SWISS on this one.

Because Switzerland is not part of the EU and taxes from LHR to a country that is not EU will attract very high departure taxes. Just be glad that you didn't buy a Business Class ticket. The departure tax there from LHR alone is GBP40!

HMMM...couldn't Swiss and EZ change their departures to the "French Sector" of the GVA airport and avoid taxes? You'd go through customs "into France" at the GVA airport, then could take off for the rest of the EU without taxes. I'm sure this isn't allowed, but it'd be an interesting way for the airlines to try to get around the rules.

Are the bilateral treaties CH-EU in effect already? Otherwise SWISS isn't allowed to fly "domestic" within the EU...

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airOli (http://www.olimade.com/airoli), the Swiss Air Line. ;)

airoli, the bilateral treaties have been in force for about half a year now. Following a quote from a translation I did on this topic:

"The Agreement on Air Transport (AAT) governs access of Swiss airlines to the liberalized European aviation market on the basis of reciprocity. Contrary to the other agreements, the Agreement on Air Transport expands the applicable EC-law to Switzerland (so-called partial integration), with a limitation in the area of traffic rights that will be granted to Swiss airlines step by step: the 3rd and 4th freedom with coming into effect of the Agreement (e.g. Zurich-Paris or Paris-Zurich respectively), the 5th and 7th freedom two years later (e.g. Zurich-Paris-Madrid or Paris London respectively). Negotiations on granting the 8th freedom will be commenced five years after coming into effect of the Agreement (so-called “Kabotage”, that is domestic flights operated by a foreign airline, e.g. Madrid-Rome). Discrimination on the grounds of nationality is prohibited, and Swiss natural and legal persons are on par with European persons, which means that they obtain freedom of establishment and investment."

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by airoli:
Are the bilateral treaties CH-EU in effect already? Otherwise SWISS isn't allowed to fly "domestic" within the EU...

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I flew Crossair last March (shortly before Swiss took over) on the GVA-NCE route (to earn my segments for the 240K promotion). The flight left from the French sector of GVA and I did wonder whether it counted as a French domestic flight.

Stephen

All flights to France from GVA have always been through the French sector of Cointrin airport.

This has to do with some obscure agreement granting the French direct access to the airport in exchange for the airport using some adjacent French land on the Jura side, and predates any bilateral CH-EU agreement.

Beware French customs at Cointrin! 90% of the time they are not even looking, but 1% of the time they might decide to comb through an unsuspecting passenger's luggage for half an hour. I definitely prefer the Swiss side's more consistent approach.

LX seem to be quite flexible. My cousin bought a ticket from them on Orbitz.com. They are the only ones it seems who allow you to make 1 change on the outbound flight with no charge. Others charge $200.