Its a good day to hear the new wing has finally opened at Zurich Airport...

Plus some nice extras for Frequent Flyers and Biz passengers (which I'll be taking full advantage of) :

http://www.swiss.com/web/EN/about_sw..._20111201.aspx

Thanks, will be able to sleep now

So they're finally back to operating three terminals. Cool.

There were times when everybody thought that concourse A was really neat :-) Now look at it.

Interesting is the re-opened spectators terrace

http://www.flughafen-zuerich.ch/desk...spx/tabid-835/

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fb...type=3&theater

http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/zuerich/...story/27838574

http://www.zuonline.ch/artikel_18352.html

All in all a positive development. Gone the times when Dock B served as "Event-Dock. The spectators-terrace was still open but no longer what it had been before as the Dock no longer serviced any airplanes.

The other new thing is the central search instead of individual searches at the gatelines, that'll make transferring much quicker and means you can spend longer in the airside centre (ok, bar) rather than having to go down early because of the queues at the search.

Also with the Dock B visitor terrace opening the E dock terrace is mostly closed. (Wednesdays and Saturdays only)

Sure, the WED/SAT opening pattern is how it was before the closure of the dock-B-terrace, and appropriate to the meagre infrastructure of the E-terrace. And the disastrous sunlight conditions (for photographers) on the E-terrace after 11 AM .

If you went today to see Dock B from the Visitors Terrace - you probably shouldn't have

I took a collection of 3 children from our appartment block and had a 45 minute wait from ca.1520-1605hrs to get in due to the Security Check.

Then I realised it was free for today - and anything free in Switzerland (e.g. the opening day of the new Airport Tram) is always a crush.

Aside from the Queueing, it was GREAT.

The kids loved the play area, the glass barriers made it feel more open and the LCD display above each gate giving the departure info of each aircraft was a very nice touch. Also telescopes were free and really high quality, I was impressed.

3 "thanks" from 3 children = 1 happy Father.
And the Air Berlin skipper waved at us all as he pushed back. Nice man!

Thanks for the report as regards children. We used to go often to the old dock with our children and were very worried they wouldn't replace it with something so child friendly.

The A380 flight crew are good for wave too!

It's not an enormous area, but it's under cover which is quite important.
Yeah, definitely recommend it, they had a lot of fun clambering around the model aircraft and going on the "Control Tower" slide.

Happy Kids = Happy Parents = generally true
Unhappy Kids = Unhappy Parents = always bloody true!!!

If you're going to Dock B have a dek at this:



Very nice esp. from 00:58 onwards, you can walk out towards the aircraft from a mini-pier out of the main pier. That wasn't open when we went.
Kids Playarea best shots are from ca. 06:30
ATC from 07:45

Well done the Swiss for giving ZRH a new visitors Terrace to be proud of.

I think it's free for the first 2 or 3 weeks and apparently they've been overwhelmed by visitors thus far...

Indeed! It's well packed there.

Oh, another little tip. Go on a rainy or a snowy day and watch the Singapore Airlines A380 depart. STD = 1045hrs in Winter Season, 1145hrs in Summer. It normally gets airbourne 15-30 minutes later.

I saw it recently and the AMOUNT of water that it kicks up from behind on the take-off roll is amazing, it's higher than the aircraft tail. A very impressive site.