Introduction

Today I’m on my way back home. It’s another fine morning in Nicosia. Back home, the temperature has dipped to fifteen degrees Celsius and, according to the weather app, it’s raining again. For my return to Zürich, I’m travelling on the Edelweiss Air direct service from Larnaca. The outbound is usually too early for me during the summer season, it already leaves Zürich at 06h05 in the morning. However, the inbound is rather conveniently scheduled to leave Larnaca at 11h20 local time, for an arrival in Zürich at 14h30.

Getting to the Airport

I order a taxi for 08h30 in the morning to take me from the Nicosia Hilton to the airport. That should bring me to the airport about two hours before departure. Just before I leave, the boss of the hotel comes to say goodbye and get one last scratch behind the ears.

The journey by taxi to the airport from Nicosia takes about forty minutes and will cost you EUR60. The fare includes a front row seat to the unrivalled insanity of the Cypriots’ eccentric style of driving.

Check-In

The airport is busy, even though we’re past the tail end of the summer season. Edelweiss Air checks in on counters 46 to 48. There is one Economy Class counter, one for Business Class, and a bag drop counter.

Just a piece of friendly advice: there is an express lane for Business Class passengers and status card holders that is also available to Edelweiss Air passengers. However, the reader cannot identify the electronic boarding pass. Therefore, you have to stop at check-in first, where they reissue the boarding pass in paper and stick a readable barcode to the back of the pass. You may be wondering “why bother?”. Quite simply, if you don’t, expect to be stuck in the regular queue for an unpleasantly long time.

The Larnaca Airport Skala Lounge

Edelweiss Air Business Class passengers now have lounge access. The Skala lounge is one floor up from the duty free shop. The stairs and lift to reach the lounge are to the left of the entrance to the duty free.

The lounge looks nice enough, and if I’m not mistaken, it’s been expanded since my last visit. It even has an outdoor terrace which doubles as the smoking area. The buffet is quite extensive, but the strong smell of rubbish around the kitchen area is quite strong and rather off putting. In a bid to cover it up, they’re using a very pungent and not very nice room spray in the lounge, which isn’t helping…

Boarding

My flight is boarding from gate 45. The way the terminal is designed makes it impossible for me to get a clean shot of the aircraft at the gate. However, once boarding starts and I’m in the airbridge, I do manage to take a few pictures of the aircraft.

The whole boarding process is a complete mess. The gate agents announce that boarding will start for Business Class passengers first – and then completely ignore their own instructions. There are little kids jumping up and down excitedly everywhere, their harassed parents not far behind. No wonder the whole boarding process takes for ever!

The Cabin & Seat

The Edelweiss Air cabin is basically the same as SWISS, just with uglier colours. I really wonder who thought the light blue was a good idea, because it’s not.

On today’s flight there are five rows of Business Class, for a total of twenty seats. I appear to have lucked out and have a whole row of three to myself. The final headcount is 166 passengers and three infants.

The Service & Crew

The crew are all rather young and all female. I must admit, though, that they’re excellent and very hard working. Throughout the flight they’re constantly passing through the cabin with drinks and snacks. It’s quite impressive!

I notice that the default language is Swissgerman, not English. Fair enough, Larnaca is primarily a leisure destination and Edelweiss Air is primarily a leisure airline catering mainly to the Swiss market.

When I arrive at my seat, the crew have placed a pillow, a cushion and a bottle of still water at my seat.

We push back on time and taxi past the old apron and terminal to the runway. Our flight time is announced as three hours and 35 minutes, with an expected arrival in Zürich at 14h10.

Once we’re airborne, we continue on a westerly track for quite some time until we reach Santorini. It’s only then that we turn in a northwesterly direction, past Mykonos and across the Adriatic towards Brindisi in Italy. It’s a very scenic route!

The Meal – Early Lunch

The meal service starts as soon as the fasten seatbelt is turned off. The crew set the table with crisp white linen and then do a drinks service ahead of the meal. The drinks are served with small ramekins of buttery puff pastry sticks.

The meal is served with the salad, main, and dessert on one plate. The salad is fairly small. It comes with boiled egg and a small pot of the Swiss interpretation of a French dressing. It’s small, but nice.

There are two choices for the main: one is beef with mash, while the other is pasta filled with ricotta and spinch in a creamy sauce of sun dried tomatoes and pesto. I have the latter, and it’s very good. The crew make three passes through the cabin with the breadbasket.

For dessert there’s a Weck glass with chocolate mousse and whipped cream. On the face of it, this meal is a lot less substantial than what I received on SWISS a few days previously on my way to Athens. However, the difference between SWISS and Edelweiss Aur is that on Edelweiss it’s as though the service never stops, neither does the food.

The tray is removed and the crew inquire if I’d like a coffee. With that, they serve pralines from the Confiserie Beschle in Basel, my home town.

Just a short while later they pass through the cabin taking orders for more drinks. They also have a snack basket with all sorts of goodies. I choose the packet of six chocolate covered Kambly biscuits.

And then just before we start the descent, they pass through the cabin again taking drink orders and handing out Biberli, a speciality from Appenzell. And then, just before the landing the crew hand out lightly scented hot towels.

Arrival in Zürich

The weather in Switzerland is definitely not as nice as Cyprus and has obviously already tipped into autumn. It’s overcast and fresh. Our approach is a bit unusual and takes us on a circuitous route before ATC brings us in for the approach on runway 14. Our flight ends on the E pier, the midfield dock for non-Schengen flights. From there I have to catch the underground shuttle to reach arrivals.

Conclusion

This was an interesting flight that gave me the opportunity to make a direct comparison between the SWISS and Edelweiss Air products. On SWISS, the meal was more elaborate in the sense that there was a lot more food on the tray. After the meal, the trays were removed and passengers were left in peace and quiet. In contrast, on Edelweiss Air the crew have obviously been trained to make sure to keep passengers entertained. I’m guessing that says a lot about the two airlines and their target audiences. While SWISS caters its Business Class product to business travellers who may want to work after the meal during the flight, on Edelweiss it’s mainly couples and families hoping to make their annual vacation that little bit more special by booking the premium product. And that, of course, comes with certain expectations. I found it rather interesting, for example, that SWISS uses the politically correct “dear guests” to address passengers, whereas Edelweiss is still very much a “ladies and gentlemen” kind of airline. I don’t want to argue for one or the other here, I just think that it does say something about the two carriers and their target audiences.