My experience is not specifically with SWISS, but with United both part of Star Alliance and thus I had booked SWISS operated flights through United. I didn't have any sketchy emails, but we have had cancelled flights with absolutely no notification. I only learned the flight was cancelled when I tried to change seats. If you have something booked or are trying to fly here's my advice/pointers for right now. I talked to a US based travel agent so most of this came from them. Obviously, this is all if you have some control. It's a tricky time to fly right now so best of luck to everyone!

• book flights that are currently running or have been for the past couple weeks (check flightaware.com)
• aim to rebook with your current airline if you already have tickets; getting the refunds is super slow across the board
• check your flight status online often in case they decide not to fly
• take deep breaths and try to prepare yourself for change

Hallo mitenand,

My flight from the end of the month is cancelled and I would like to fly on july or august, but not a the recent prices.

I've been tryin to call swiss and no way..... I cannot do any operation online because it says there is a problem.

Could somebody explain what's the point on the fligtvoucher? If you register on the web, do they let you change your flight until 31.08 without extra costs?

I hope they don't do the trick to force to pay the difference that it could be much money.


Thanks guys

The flightVoucher sounds nice if they just offer you a new flight without extra costs, price difference, etc.
Why don^t they give this info in the Q&A?

The trick with the voucher is two-fold:
1 - You cannot later request a refund. You've agreed to a voucher and that's that.
2 - You end up paying the price difference, if any. That's because your voucher is for X amount. The current price is Y, which in almost all cases is higher right now.

Great info. Where can I get the refund? calling is the only one option?

I'd have to double-check. Mr Wishes said the other day he found a page online to request a refund, but at that time he didn't have info to hand to do it. Recently it was only via a phone call.

AFAIK Swiss has closed off the link to ask for a refund online. Either call them (waiting time is not bad these days) or try Facebook.

Edit: it seems to be online again:

https://www.swiss.com/ch/EN/customer-support/refund#

https://www.swiss.com/de/DE/kundensu...ueckerstattung

That might be it. It does say only for flights booked with SWISS and if you booked with a travel agent to contact said agent.

However the news covered this at least a month ago. The law says, and the Swiss government confirmed, it's airlines that are responsible for issuing refunds and they should not be tossing customers back to travel agents (who then bounce you back to the airline).

I sent the request for refund as you advise.

Now I am checking for a new flight in september and I found a good one with swiss but bought in lastminute.de. Do you think it's a good idea to buy through a reseller in the corona time? Is it the same at the time of claiming a refund? I don't think so, but i ask.

Avoid resellers in this situation, a reseller means a 3 rd party in the communication.

Had a flight cancelled from swiss, booked on LH , LH did nothing at all, so i cancelled the whole ticket, because i need to travel sunday.
A direct flight would take 1 Hour 15 mins, the current options are redicoulous, up to 17.5 hours and the ticket starts from 360 Euros one way.
I go by train now.

I have a few tickets stuck with Swiss. Got them on the phone and also on FB. Long story short:

"We ask for your understanding that we are currently unable to process refunds on any of our channels at short notice due to the very high number of requests we are receiving."

So either get a voucher or you need to wait for your money god-know-how-long. Sounds really fair. Ohh wait...
With this approach why would they expect any goodwill of passengers? I've filled a chargeback request today with my credit card provider.

I thought the Swiss government said they have until at least September to issue refunds before any sort of punitive action kicks in. Can you file a chargeback on something that was bought months ago and already paid on your monthly statement back then??

Hell, I can.
Just from my own perspective: we 'signed' a contract when i bought these tickets. They didn't hold up their end thus they owe me my money back. Apparently within 7 days... Why would I be so nice to Swiss? Are they nice to pax generally? Ohh no, they stick to the same contract. Seemingly only whenever at ease.

And generally speaking I consider this a huge shame on them:
1) most of the labour cost covered by the country (Kurzarbeit), so they minimised this loss anyway. Somehow they still find the resources to top up staff salary to >90%
2) they are begging for extra state aid on top of that
3) still laying off a lot of people
4) lobbying at EU to allow vouchers instead of cash refunds
The owners just took a sh*tload of money from the whole group in the past few years. Time to close a bad year and stop crying. Could happend to anybody.

I thought the question was more: will your credit card issuer accept that claim as it was more than 30 days (or whatever) ago? Often there is a time limit for a claim, same as with direct debits, unless it was a fraudulent one.

It looks like they do accept (not a Swiss card btw).
Some other tickets were bought from a Revolut card, they have no such service

Yes, sorry if I wasn't clear. That's what I meant. I don't have a Swiss credit card, but my bank statement says something along the lines of "you have 30 days to dispute anything on this statement, otherwise we assume it's a valid charge".

If it was really that easy to get a chargeback, I'd think we would have seen more of that and fewer complaints about inability to get a refund?

You’re exactly correct. They apply the legal T&Cs very quickly when it suits them but now that we expect the same they cry foul.

I’ve been emailing / calling repeatedly and always get the same vanilla response of “We are aware of the legal situation and refunds are still possible. However, we ask you to understand that due to the current situation, refunds will only be processed at a later date. We are currently unable to give you a time limit for processing refunds. Hopefully you can understand that we are also looking forward to paying these refunds.”

They know the law and their obligations for a refund within 7 days yet they are willingly and knowingly choosing to ignore it. My cynical view is they hope I’ll forgot about it as it drags on.

I get it, times are challenging and unprecedented in recent history — it is for many. However, I am not a bank and didn’t sign up to give them an interest free loan until they deem it the right time to give me my money back for a service they didn’t provide.

I’ve started to include in the emails the addresses for their CEO, Director of Customer Relations and Head of Customer & Corporate responsibility but so far to no avail.

Hello all,

I learned today something about the booking cancellation and refund with Swiss/Edelweiss.

I used the Swiss website to request a refund on 29.06.2020. In the website the name and E-ticket number are requested.I went on vacation with other airline, returned to CH and still not got the refund.

I called today to Swiss and found that my refund request was ignored. The explanation is convoluted but makes sense, bear with me I bought the ticket last February and I got a booking reference (6 characters) and an E-ticket number (12 numbers). I requested the refund with the E-ticket number as requested in their website, but.....before my request refund Swiss rescheduled my flight like 3 times, and in every reschedule the E-ticket number changes. The only thing that stays the same is the booking reference. So, I requested the refund with an invalid E-ticket number and nothing happened.

I called today Swiss at +41 848 700 700 and they processed it once again. No questions asked about why I wanted to cancel and I should expect the refund on the credit card on 2 weeks.

Forgot to update this but I finally got a refund last week for my flight that Swiss cancelled in late March.