Swiss has "officially" become LCC
 

At least in economy they have no ambition anymore to be 5* - and they think about introducing the great BoB concept also from ZRH.

Articles in...
...German: https://www.blick.ch/news/wirtschaft...id8670171.html
...French: 20 minutes - Swiss est devenue une compagnie low-cost - News

Zero news in this article. It only describes the reality of all European short-haul airlines, irrespective of their heritage as "flag carriers" or "LCC start-ups".

I am confident that BoB will come to flights ex ZRH before the end of the year, and to the rest of the LH Group before the end of 2019.

Seriously. If anything the "news" in the last couple of years is that there is more and more of a differentiation between economy and business/first. But this applies to most airlines. With SWISS this is more pronounced since there is no Premium economy.

They do. Even though there are some people which rather pay 25 EUR more for a flight, there are hundreds of other which will go for EasyJet, Ryanair etc just because they are 1 EUR cheaper. I know a family (actually with a quite decent income) where the mom is spending weeks looking for the cheapest possible return flight for the family vacation. And we are not talking J deals across the Atlantic, more like some shabby touristy beach in Spain, Turkey or Tunesia.

I remember Hubert Frach, the then head of LH marketing, saying: 'People are happy to pay 20-30 GBP/Person to go into Madame Tussauds, but if LH is not cheaper than 100€, they will book Ryanair & Easyjet and pay more to come in from LTN/STN' ;)

And, unfortunately, for most/many people, he was right. :(

Hahahaha, great demonstration about human non-sense.

But it is not so simple. I few weeks ago I had to buy a one-way ticket GVA-IBZ. EZ was they only company offering a direct flight. So I flew with EZ. Price was about CHF 250 (one way). Firstly, it was not cheap. Secondly, I chose an LCC because LX does not operate a direct flight. And finally, had LX offered a direct flight, I would have considered the flight schedule as well.

Had LX/EZ offered the same direct flight on a similar schedule, I would have accepted to pay about 20% more for LX, mainly to be able to access the lounge in GVA, as I was flying in the evening (when risks of delays are greater). To have to pay a few EUR for a drink or not is low on my list of criteria.

First of all, had LX offered a competing flight with EZ on that route, fares (= yield) on both airlines would have immediately dropped a lot, killing margins. That is exactly what AB did to LH Group until its collapse.

At that point, few if any potential passengers would truly book (and not just say so) an LX fare 20% higher than the EZ fare. And if they did, they would do so only to use the extra services you mention (lounge, miles, status, drinks etc.) - which in aggregate cost much more than the 20% yield premium LX gets, thus making the entire operation unprofitable.

Again, I truly wish that there was a sizable, sustainable premium demand within Europe to keep traditional "legacy" operations flying. But there just isn't.