So So Swiss Business Class

Confession: My first ever business class flight was on Swiss back in 2019, and I had a phenomenal time. And not just because the crew gave me a ton of Swiss chocolate. Fast forward to 2024, and I wanted to see what had (or hadn’t) changed. Unfortunately, while the hard product remained the same, the soft product felt a bit more like Lufthansa Business Class (and not in a good way).

Booking

I booked this ticket from Zurich (ZRH) to Toronto (YYZ) via Montreal (YUL) on a Monday, and I estimate this flight was about 80% full. And to be honest, while it was a good experience, the price tag (upwards of $8,000), isn’t worth it when competitors like LOT / TAP are selling tickets for around $2,000 with one connection

Flight: LX 86

Departing: Zurich (ZRH)

Arriving: Montreal (YUL)

Operated by: Airbus A330

Cabin: Business Class

Check in and Ground Experience

Check in at Zurich was a bit more chaotic than I remembered, although this was likely due to the summer school season. The Swiss International team members were unfortunately not able to add my Aeroplan number to my 2nd ticket, though the Air Canada team at the same airport were able to. Beyond priority check in, Swiss also lets you use the Priority Security Lane for it’s business class customers, which I appreciated.

Security

Swiss has lounges throughout the Airport (A, D and E gates), and this is probably one of the best lounge business class experiences I have had. One thing to note is that regular non Star Alliance Gold business class passengers don’t get access to the famous Whisky Club 28/10 in the Senator lounge in Terminal E. I checked :(.

Instead, I made my way to Terminal D, and was blown away by both the decor and the food available. Take notes Air Canada!

Lounge

The D lounges also have an outdoor terrace where you can watch planes taking off, and where you can also take some food from inside the lounge.

Terrance

There was a vast quantity and quality of food, both cold and hot options, savory and sweet ones.

In addition, there were coffee machines dotted throughout the passage, as well as other alcoholic and non alcoholic offerings. North America take not, there was no anarchy when people self served their own drinks!

Finally, my favorite part of the lounge: the ice cream section. Movenpick is one of my favorite ice cream brands, although it is owned by Nestle, and not by the hotel chain that bears it’s name.

Ice Cream

Sugar Palace

The lounge was dotted with Breitling SA clocks; one of the best parts about Switzerland is how expensive watchmakers sponsor large clocks throughout the country.

Just as I was about to leave, an attendant asked me whether I had snuck through the door (I did not)! Swiss is a high trust society, which it totally respect, and so the lounge exit was right beside the lounge entrance, and could have been easily accessed. I thought the lounge experience was extremely strong, perhaps one of the best ones I have had in business class.

Boarding was a tad chaotic: one had to get a stamp on the ticket indicating an ability to return to Canada, but the stamp line was separate from the boarding line, which means many people were sent away to get the stamp. Boarding was complete ~20 minutes late, which was the start of many delays.

Seat and Cabin

Swiss tries to have both First and Business class products on all it’s wide body planes, and this A330 was no exception. If possible, try to select a “throne” seat with extra room, as it is awkward sitting next to someone in business class if you don’t know them. Non Senator members should be able to select them at check-in for free, and there were 2 throne seats (4A and 12A) when I was checking in.

Throne Seat

Side by side seats

My hot take is that if I was awake, I would enjoy the throne seat more, whilst if I was sleeping I would want my own pod, like those in Air France’s Business class seat. These seats are due for a refresh, especially since the rest of the world has started to make business class move private, and also more first class like. Speaking of which, see below for Swiss’ First Class product, which is a far cry from Emirate’s First Class product.

First Class

Back to business class. On the seat was a pillow, and a relatively thin blanket. The blanket made sense give this was a daytime flight, and the temperature wasn’t too cold.

Pillow and Blanket

On the left of the seat was a charging port, headphone jack, and seat controls.

Seat Controls

Directly in front of the seat was the footrest - whilst some commentors consider it narrow, I personally didn’t have any issues.

Footrest

What I did find issue with was the In Flight Entertainment, which looked like it was straight out the 2000’s. Thankfully, the new Swiss Senses seat will have a 17 inch TV with 4K resolution, but right now I find it funny at how terrible the entertainment is.

In Flight Entertainment

The rest of the front of the seat included headphones, bottle of Evian water (which seems to be quite common in Europe) and a coat hanger.

Front of the Seat

This is the seat in lie flat mode, fairly standard.

Amenities

This was probably the worst business class amenity kit I ever received, period.

Amenity Kit

Unrelated, I find it funny that Swiss Business Class offers duty free whilst on board, I feel is cheapens the overall experience. Anyways, the kit itself was a metal container, which isn’t too bad. It’s that the contents were very lackluster, which included a toothbrush, toothpaste, socks, lip balm, and a very uncomfortable eyemask.

Contents

The bathroom was fairly similar to economy, except there was some extra lotion and face creams. I did manage to take a picture of the first class bathroom, and it was equally as sparse, just with better amenities (2nd slide, 2nd picture).

Business Class Amenities

Swiss can definitely spruce this up a bit, especially considering it’s competition Lufthansa in First Class has a cabinet of goodies in it’s washrooms.

Food and Drink

I have pretty mixed feelings about the food and drink: the food was pretty good, but alas came in smaller quantities than I remembered from 5 years ago. Or maybe I just got bigger. For the full menu, check out this thread.

The meal semi-started with warm nuts (more on that later), along with a fresh towel.

Warm Nuts

I started by enjoying champagne and chocolates, both of which were pretty good. The champagne was Jacquart Mosaïque Brut, whilst the chocolate was Frey, a supermarket brand. But hey, it tasted good so one can’t argue.

The starter was a steamed trout dish, which was amazingly well cooked, and accompanied by a delightful sauce. The great sauce theme would continue through the meal, hats off to the dude with a hat cooking at a 3 Michelin star restaurant (Restaurant de l'Hôtel de Ville).

Trout Starter

The dish was accompanied by fresh, delicious bread, and flight attendants came around several times to ask if we wanted more. Next up was the steak dish: the flight attendants didn’t ask how I wanted it to be cooked, and subsequently brought out a rubbery steak. But the basil sauce was great!

Steak

Also, I checked my old pictures, and it seems like the steak shrunk by about a third compared to when I last flew Swiss. Thus, I also asked for the Grilled Chicken, which was certainly a lot better.

Grilled Chicken

Finally, there was an eclair with raspberries and pistachios, which I quite enjoyed. Flight attendants also came by asking if anyone wanted chocolates afterwards.

Eclair

Upon waking up from my nap, I was greeted with a chocolate and coffee.

Chocolate and Coffee

The Service

One annoying this (this isn’t just Swiss), was the amount of rolling delays on this flight. It was in 20-30 minute increments, driven my mechanical failures, waiting, confirmations, gate delays. Airlines shouldn’t wait until passengers are on board to resolve this issue.

Anyways, the service on the flight was more of the efficient, Swiss version, not the touchy feely nice American version. Everything was brought out promptly and efficiently when requested, although I did get a small sense that I was burdening the attendants. Shoutout to the purser, who was super nice, and keeping things light during the delay.

The Point

Swiss’ product was good 5 years back, now it has fallen behind. The hard product especially is out of date (looking at you screen), and the amenities / kit should certainly be improved. It does look like Swiss has heard this, with the new Swiss Sense seats. Another issue is competition: with TAP / LOT selling tickets for up to 4 times less than Swiss, one has to question whether Swiss was worth it. I definitely would take this flight again, but would not go out of my way to fly it, or would reposition for TAP / LOT given their pricing.

Zurich Airport