Goulash for exotic meat lovers sounds great.

If going with bags it's awful. The drop off at the station is very impractical, then there are one or two changes of train which if you have 2 cases and a golf bag and by yourself is very difficult. Couple that with the unreliability of the service to/ from Lugano it's an absolute no no.

Milan on the other hand is very easy. Taxi costs between chf 50 and 100, door to terminal, plenty of trolleys (not one at Lugano station) and an hour from home to airport versus 3.5 hours using the train.

Of course nothing beats the convenience of Lugano and for Swiss to abandon it is nothing short of disgraceful. Once again Ticino thrown to the dogs by the arrogant Swiss Germans by an airline that should be renamed Zurich Airways.

As a consequence my long haul will now be with Emirates and for European travel I have a choice of airlines that fly direct. Such a shame from an airline I've flown with for over 40 years (Swissair before) and have top tier status with. Needless to say there is a lot of discontent here and the rhetoric is a lot stronger than mine!!!

Swiss is owned and run by Luftwaffe since quite a while now

Hi, thanks for replying! I was checking the trains, and currently the IC2 takes 2h 16' from Lugano to Zurich HB. Let's say that by end of 2020 it's extended to Zurich Airport so you don't have to change anymore (+15') the Ceneri tunnel opens (-15') and the works between Zug and Arth are over (-15')... then you would have a direct train that takes 2h, from Lugano city to inside the airport. Would it still be that bad, compared to going to Agno and flying to Zurich? I never did that, that's why I'm asking.

PS: I don't work for Swiss nor SBB I'm just interested in transportation. Recently there's been much talk about environmental issues of flying and I think this situation with Lugano could be the first ..."laboratory" to understand if and when short flights can be replaced by trains or other means of transportation.

I think that in the future, people will use Malpensa rather than Zurich as many people only used Zurich as Lugano was more convenient and the Lugano-Zurich flight free.

I certainly will.

Tom

The idea is good, but I'm not actually aware of any proposal by SBB to run the Ticino trains to the airport.

In fact the boot is on the other foot and SBB is actually thinking out loud about reducing the number of IC trains stopping at Zürich Airport and turning the slots over to S-Bahns.

https://www.toponline.ch/news/zueric...assen-0080024/

You are right, that was my idea. I am trying to see how much you can squeeze from the train service and I believe extending them would be the minimum.

Currently the ICs calling at Flughafen are the West-East ICs (e.g. Bern - San Gallen); the article mentions the will to reduct travel time for eastern Switzerland, which would not prevent trains from the south to reach the airport. If Swiss is working with SBB I expect them evaluating this type of solution... but let's see what they come up with.

I am personally not convinced about limiting the airport stop to S-Bahn, Haputbahnhof is very big and adding a change to everybody would not be so confortable, just to put it lightly. If you want to remove some "duplicates" between air network and rail network, the new solution must try to reproduce the advantages of the one you eliminate.

You are right about HB. It's not a good place to lug luggage around in, especially if you're a foreign visitor and don't know the quickest way.

I hope that Swiss and the airport authorities weigh in on SBB to protect the IC stop.

The situation at Geneva is pretty much perfect, with virtually all IC trains calling at Cornavin then continuing to the airport. A pity that Geneva doesn't have more useful flights to be able to make the best of that.

In Basel a big opportunity is being missed. Basel is analogous to Geneva (pre airport) in that a lot of trains end there and then stand around waiting to return. So it wouldn't seriously mess with the rest of the system if such trains would continue to the airport in that time, giving Basel airport direct trains to much of the country.

Instead the airport station they are planning is going to be a little one, fit only for the S-Bahn.

Zürich is in an intermediary situation. The airport line is a long loop off the shortest line to Winterthur and so there is a time penalty for going there, even before you factor in the stop. There are proposals to build a new line, largely in tunnels, from the airport to Winterthur. This would remedy that. But this project seems to take ages to take off.

There is also a limit to the number of trains that can terminate at the airport as the layout was not really designed with that in mind and there aren't sufficient tracks to hold terminating trains. So if you want to take the Ticino trains there, you would probably as a minumum have to continue them to Winterthur.

All of this can of course be fixed with some creative thinking. But I don't think SBB sees the need.

I live quite near Agno, so for me it's the most convenient way to get to London. It's quick, easy and if there's a delay on the Agno-Zurich route, the flight-to-flight connection is covered. If Swiss were to offer its Airtrain service, I wouldn't mind so much getting the train to Zurich (if it went directly to the airport).

Getting to Malpensa is a pain on public transport (almost impossible by train) and I just don't like the airport.

Yes! When I first moved down here, there were several flights a day to Geneva with a choice of Swiss or Etihad, plus Swiss to Zurich. Now there is nothing. At least there is a train to Zurich, but getting to Geneva is impossible.

New ‘Flugzug’ rail service between Lugano and Zurich Airport

https://swiss.newsmarket.com/english...c-a001c919b7e7

I don't think anything was touched in the timetable, so the ticket is valid from Lugano to ZRH but one has to change in HB. The only difference is that now you can buy it as if it was a connecting flight. They promise more enhancements.

Not good enough, I'd rather drive to Malpensa.

Tom

If it doesn't pay its own way then why should they fly it?

If the route is so attractive then someone else will pick it up. They won't precisely because it cannot be run at a profit.

I agree. Hope they will add some substantially improvement... next window to change the timetable is June, but only for minor corrections. The next big one is December 2020.

Most train and bus routes run at a loss, should we cancel those as well?

The reason for the Lugano-Zurich route is to encourage people to use Zurich rather than Malpensa for the main flight. With no flight from Lugano, using Malpensa is a no-brainer.

Swiss is the loser here.

Tom

Nationalised ones yes. Privately run (like airlines), not really.

Not going to add a sarcastic emoticon like you because, frankly, it's a bit childish, but probably my post deserves it more than yours.

Being Swiss a private company... maybe they did the math and found that operating the flights to/from Lugano was more expensive than the profit that feeding was providing. In other words, might be that it is more profitable for them to have 20 passengers taking the train to Zurich than having 100 passengers flying from Agno.

They must have been a good reason to return a licence they were already using... usually these decisions are money-related.

At the moment the tickets by Swiss are extremely cheap. Just bought a return flight in December for 110 CHF so probably now it's a good time to do a weekend trip
Few years ago they did similar with flights to Graz, after few months price went from 60 to 300.

Not really.

Many airlines make money on their long haul routes and operate short haul at a loss in order to funnel passengers into their long haul hubs.

This is why you keep getting these strange anomalies that it's cheaper, say to fly Zürich - LA with stopover in Frankfurt than it is to fly Frankfurt - LA direct.

How's that different to what I wrote?

They're doing it for financial reasons alone and not as a public service or for other moral reasons. If it is so they can allow connection to their major routes then so be it.

There are other reasons - such as being forced to fly to remote areas by governments of the country in which the airlines operate.