Airlines are under pressure to cut short flights between locations that are well connected by rail. The logic being that trains have lower emissions that planes. However, Swiss has no plans to cut flights between Switzerland’s two main cities, reported RTS.
Dieter Vranckx, a manager at Swiss, told RTS that the company wants to optimise its network connections to French-speaking Switzerland.
Airlines operate via hubs. Passengers from numerous small regional airports, such as Geneva, can be combined in larger airports like Zurich to improve the efficiency of onward flights. Trains could also bring people into hub airports, however, this presents certain challenges. It may not occur to people wishing to fly from Geneva to search for departures out of Zurich. In addition, the added train travel could add to journey time – the flight is less than an hour and the train more than three – as well as increasing the cost. The airline might swallow the cost of the flights between Geneva and Zurich and make money on the longer follow-on flight. However, Swiss Rail is a separate company that must charge for the journey. And this will add to the overall cost of the journey for passengers.
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RTS article (in French) – Take a 5 minute French test now
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