Originally Posted by
AntonS
I flew a number of Edelweiss flights and quite enjoyed them, especially for occasional A340s on European routes.
But to be honest there is not much difference from Swiss as far as inflight product goes. Most of the differences are in website and support and they are actually quite annoying and it gets even more annoying for WK flights booked as Swiss (sometimes neccessary for mileage tickets or tickets originating outside of Switzerland, i.e you can not buy HER-ZRH one way on WK website).
It must be expensive for a relatively small airline like LX to support separate even smaller airline like WK. Is WK branding so strong that cost savings from merging them would not be offset (and probably higher pay scale of LX but I have no idea if this is the case).
It might still be possible maintain a sub-brand but with fully merged IT, reservations and everything else?
WK started off as a charter airline owned by tour operator "Kuoni", before bought up by LX. WK is a purley leisure airline, targetted for local Swiss travelers. They "only" offer leisure destinations. They have a very low cost structure, salaries etc are lower than at LX. Having worked for 28 year in airline IT.... their IT system is much simpler. They e.g. do not offer interlining. Unless obviously you book the LX code, but that is then managed on the Amadeus system. Also, WK cannot handle multi-leg flights, and often certain long-haul flights are merged 3 days prior to departure, especially if they are not fully booked. E.g. you will notice that some ZRH-PUJ and ZRH-CUN flights often leave at the same time. While the PUJ flights will show the correct flight time of roughly 10 hours, the CUN flight (which show nonstop) will show some 13 hours flight time, which obviously is not correct, as this is the travel time. It is only then correct when the flights are merged and a stop is made in PUJ
Booking one-way tickets with WK is not common, as the leisure traveler will always want to return home, but it is possible on their website for flights departing ZRH. Departure handling is performed on the Amadeus system mostly.
WK is very popular and enjoys an excellent reputation (hence your "strong brand" comment) WK is a top notch airline for leisure travel, doesn't quite meet LX standards though in my view, but is extremely close. C product for a leisure carrier is excellent, after having replaced their seats with lie-flat seats (I believe the same seats LX has, or at least previously had).
While I agree that fully integrating into Amadeus IT would be beneficial, I think it would be an overkill and would only increase their costs.
WK is not participating in M&M, so always book the LX code. While the LX code may be slightly more expensive than booking WK, you will get all the M&M benefits.
Since WK is so successful, the LH group took their business model to create Eurowings Discover in July 2021.