From November 7th, Coop will sell vouchers that enable travel on Swiss to various European destinations at considerable savings -
e.g. from Zurich, Manchester for 139 CHF instead of the current lowest of 330ish CHF
also offers from Basel, Geneva

check it out at www.swiss.com/coop

Hope it is of interest

Andy

Now this is actually very interesting....

At first I thought these prices would be EXCLUDING taxes, but they are not - they are all inclusive prices. I looked for the fine print, but there isn't much:

Flights must be taken between November 11 and December 14, 2006 or between January 5 and March 31, 2007. You must stay 2 nights or a Saturday night. You can buy up to 5 vouchers per person, and seating is limited on flights. You can buy the vouchers (while stocks last) between Nov 7-18. You must book between Nov 7-30. You can return unused vouchers for a refund anytime during the booking period.

Worth checking out the link above, and following the link to the press release which has more details. There are quite a few destinations listed!

Swiss got burnt a couple of years ago advertising 99chf* flights, where the total extras listed under "*" came to almost 150% extra! And given that swiss folk are not fond of "*" fine print offers, it backfired. They won't make that mistake again.

I checked the pdf, it seems a bit vague to me.

"Depending on destination, the prices vary between 79 and 189, and are valid for the outbound and return flight."

So is the price listed including both flights, or does a return cost you double? Judging by the Gutschein price they list, I think they mean the price listed is for a single outbound flight only. The reason I say this is that a normal price would seem to be the Gutschein price, and this is about right if you check now what their cheapest fare is. Take a return Basel-Amsterdam which is 209 now, and 200 with Gutscheins and 178 with the COOP offer.

Prices are clearly return and include taxes, and are a substantial discount
over the normal price.
I quote from the English version of the site:

All the taxes and fees and your return flight to Switzerland are included in the price of the voucher. Please note the travel terms and conditions, as well as the booking- and travelperiod.

Andy

Muze7 - gutschein = voucher. Please remember this is an Engish language forum. Thanks.

Actually the prices seemed to vary more on the departure point, rather than the destination. In the PDF I read there were tables listing all the destinations and the prices seemed to be the same for each destination. When I moved onto the next table which had a different departure point (but the same destinations) the prices then changed. Seemed quite clear to me, but we may have been reading different PDFs. I clicked on the press release link from the link listed above.

I often wonder what would have happened if Crossair had not be destroyed in order to save Zurich airport following the Swissair grounding. When you look it at Easyjet just proved that extending the Crossair model and flying from Basel was profitable. Now Swiss are realising that it makes sense to compete in Basel rather than moving everything to one of the most expensive airports in Europe (Zurich).

It is good to see Swiss finally trying to compete again but I have to say it is not my airline of choice after the whole debacle.

Martin

I look at it this way - I didn't get to vote for that debacle, but big chunk of my taxes paid for it. So now I'm going to try and claw back some of the value. I'll be first in line on Tuesday

Hi Mark,

so true and one of the reason why I do consider one day taking dual nationality. I don't like paying taxes and not being able to vote. As they say "taxation without representation is theft". It is incredible how much swiss taxpayer's money was spent. However, I still don't understand why the transatlantic part of the business was worth saving and why they didn't just give to Lufthansa and saved us all a lot of money.

Martin

if anyone still wondering if it is a fair offer - I assure you it is! booked today a flight to Rome for 139 CHF from Zurich

What about booking flights for kids & babies ? usually you have to pay full fare for both in these promotions

am not sure about children, sorry

and forgot to mention: it is a return flight they sell for that money

Definitely good offers although I must add that I have found similar good offers with SWISS just by logging directly into their website. For example, on Dec 4th I need to fly to Hannover. I bought the ticket two months ago at 19 francs each way. With taxes and all it came to 150 francs round trip. Naturally, to take advantage of the good rates, one has to know way in advance when they are flying. I tried looking at the same flight with a one month advance purchase and it was up to 900 francs!

You can already start booking now:-

Booking period: October 22 to November 12, 2007.
Travel period: November 1, 2007 to March 15, 2008

You have to buy the voucher first and enter the code when you book the actual flight

If you intend to fly between Jan 1, 2007 and March 30, 2007, you may be interested in the deal we negotiated for our members with AirFrance.ch

Check out http://offers.glocals.com/offers-Airfrance-1.htm for details.


To avoid confusion, this offer is only open to glocals.com members, and I am one of the people managing glocals.com

Thanks

Oded

How is this enforced - Air France certainly wasn't bothered by my non-membership...

You can just go straight to http://www.airfrance.ch and use the promotion code from the above link GLOCALS166 when it comes to confirming the reservation. Being a member of glocals.com does not appear to be a requirement.

Hi Swissbob

The offer is for glocals.com members only.

How strongly this will be enforced is up to AF, but it is clearly stated in the offer conditions.

In any case, happy flying.

Oded