Swiss Air (1931 - 2002)

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Some companies are too solid to fail, and that is precisely how you know they will. Swissair was nicknamed the ‘Flying Bank’ – an airline so synonymous with Swiss reliability that its balance sheet was a point of national pride and its punctuality a point of national smugness. Which is why what happened still functions, in Switzerland, as a kind of collective trauma.

The instrument of destruction had a name and a consultant’s sheen: the ‘Hunter Strategy.’ Rather than join a global alliance as a junior partner, Swissair’s parent, SAirGroup, decided to become a predator – buying stakes in a flotilla of weaker European airlines: Sabena in Belgium, the French carriers AOM and Air Liberté, Italy’s Volare, Poland’s LOT, and – museum visitors will recognise the name – Germany’s LTU (see our aviation wing, where the same airline helped bury three separate owners).

The trouble with hunting is that you can catch things that then eat you. Most of these airlines were weak for good reasons; Swissair poured in capital and guarantees, and the losses compounded across a portfolio of other people’s problems. By 2001 the group was carrying enormous debt and, after the post-9/11 collapse in air travel, was insolvent in everything but the official paperwork.

Then came the day itself.

On 2 October 2001, UBS declined to extend Swissair’s credit line, and with no cash to pay for fuel and ground handling, the entire fleet was grounded – the ‘Grounding,’ capital G, as it is known in Switzerland to this day. Aircraft sat on tarmacs around the world; tens of thousands of passengers were stranded; a national emblem was, quite literally, unable to buy kerosene. SAirGroup eventually collapsed with debts of around CHF 17 billion.

The Swiss establishment could not stomach a country with no flag carrier, so banks and the government funded a successor. The regional subsidiary Crossair was rebranded Swiss International Air Lines in 2002, took over the best routes and aircraft, and was itself eventually bought by Lufthansa in 2005 – the proud independent airline ending up, after all that, as a German subsidiary.

For the museum, Swissair is the definitive specimen of a particular and recurring delusion: the belief that a pristine reputation and a bold growth strategy are a substitute for not running out of money.

The Flying Bank had the finest brand in the sky and a strategy deck to match. Neither could be exchanged for jet fuel on the morning of 2 October.