Final curtain for Swissair
The last Swissair plane to Cape Town has taken off from Zurich airport amidst a huge crowd celebrating the end of an era.
More than 4,000 Swissair employees gathered at Kloten airport to mark the end of Swissair’s 71-year-long history when the last flight to Cape Town left the tarmac on Wednesday night.
The South African city was also Swissair’s very first destination as a national carrier.
The airline, founded in 1931, has since transported more than 260 million passengers around the globe.
The final Swissair flight will touch down in Zurich from Sao Paolo in Brazil on Easter Monday.
Hundreds of people waving Swissair flags lined the runway to say good-bye to the fully booked plane, the crew and the once proud airline and joined in with the cheerful sounds of Swissair’s very own big band.
At the same time Crossair flight LX 578 took off for the German town of Nuremberg.
Symbolic handshake
Crossair chief executive, André Dose, and former Swissair chairman, Mario Corti, marked the event with a symbolic handshake.
Corti said he hoped the new national carrier “swiss” would be successful and wished Dose and his new airline “many happy landings”.
In a short speech, Dose said he was convinced that swiss would become a profit-making airline and pointed out the deal that was reached with American Airlines on Tuesday. “Now it is time to create a Swiss culture,” he said.
swiss is due to take off on Easter Sunday with its virgin flight going from Basel to Zurich.
swissinfo with agencies
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.