Following the $600 million bridging loan provided to Swissair by the Swiss Federal Government, the airline today announced a new Middle East winter timetable offering a choice of 27 weekly flights to Zurich. The joint effort among political and economic leaders in Switzerland has also resulted in a total recapitalization package of $2.3 billion to build a new Swiss airline, to be launched by April 2002, a company press release disclosed.
“We have a strong winter timetable to connect passengers from the region to Zurich, our key hub, and over 100 onward destinations across the world. The revised timetable ensures that we have retained seven of our eight routes from the Middle East until March 30, 2002 ”, said Swissair Area Manager for the Arabian Gulf, Felix Rodel.
The new timetable offers daily flights from Dubai, six weekly flights from Cairo, three weekly flights from Riyadh, Muscat, Karachi and Abu Dhabi and two weekly flights from Jeddah. Swissair, which operated six weekly flights to Zurich from Beirut, has cancelled its operation in this sector. One weekly flight from Jeddah and Cairo each have been cancelled. In addition, frequency has been reduced by two weekly flights from Abu Dhabi and Karachi.
On September 24, 2001, the Swissair Group announced a series of measures to restructure the airline and its related activities to build a new Swiss airline with an attractive European and intercontinental network.
The restructuring package announced that Swissair and a former Swissair Group subsidiary company, Crossair AG, would be integrated to create the new airline. The aim of the new package is to create a new single integrated network by April 1, 2002. The process of developing the new airline will be implemented by two separate teams, which will work independently but remain in close contact. — (menareport.com)
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
