A surprising move by the daughter airline of LX, but with the obvious question marks behind it. Free publicity for WK?

In German: http://www.20min.ch/finance/news/story/ ... n-18539380


David

The distance is 12332 km/ 7663 miles, which is Way too far for their A330-300s. Since ther their A330-200 is being retired, the ex-SWISS A340-300 can operate the route, possibly with a slight payload hit.

Surely that's beyond the range of an A343 with a full passenger load ? Maybe they can obtain a couple of the stored LH 346's for this sort of flight.

In the rest of the article, it mentions only a direct flight, not a nonstop flight in the catchy headline. YVR and YYC are perfect stopovers as they are on the flightpaths to HNL. That's a very surprising news from the Swiss's subs. If it's seasonal, it could work quite well.

It should be doable with the A340-300.

ZRH-HNL is 7,623 miles, Philippine Airlines operates/ed Cebu-LAX with the A340, which is 7,344 miles. SA also at one stage operated JNB-JFK with the A340-300, which is 7.969 miles (although this might have made a tech stop en route). I'm not sure what the Edelweiss configuration is but I would imagine quite dense, which could be a problem for a flight this long.

The question is - would Edelweiss be able to get the yields to make this flight work?

yoni wrote:

In the rest of the article, it mentions only a direct flight, not a nonstop flight in the catchy headline. YVR and YYC are perfect stopovers as they are on the flightpaths to HNL. That's a very surprising news from the Swiss's subs. If it's seasonal, it could work quite well.

Being a German native speaker, I would tend to say that direct flight and non-stop flight are more synonymous in German than in English (especially in non-Aviation specific outlets) and it also discussses the length of the potential flight

My guess is that the A343 won't make it with a full payload, but I could be wrong.

I said it in the last discussion of this, you have 2 long ETOPS sectors and strong headwinds depending on the season. All to chase low yield passengers. Hawaiian should serve Europe from their HNL-JFK route and end this dream of a European airline going to Hawaii.

Can they do that with their current fleet?

CI did TPE-JFK 7800sm and were usually fine eastbound but took hits westbound and ultimately put an ANC stop in.

Hmm, we had heard that Edelweiss may serve YYC next year with the A343 (we have had the 332 and 333 this summer). Perhaps they go for this and tack on the stop at YYC on the way? There are quite a lot of people that fly YYC-Hawaii (although OGG is the more popular destination).

Will this airline be the first European airline to fly to HNL?

The question is, are they doing this alone or out of a request from travel operators? If it's the latter than there's no reason why it wouldn't work.
Do they still have a relationship with Kuoni Travel?

is there really a demand for Hawaii-Switzerland? i could understand London but Switzerland is tiny for that kind of route.

usflyer123 wrote:

is there really a demand for Hawaii-Switzerland? i could understand London but Switzerland is tiny for that kind of route.

Of course it would be for connecting passengers to their large network.

#12 Will this airline be the first European airline to fly to HNL?

BOAC flew to Honolulu on their round the world flights for quite a few years. I took them fro SFO to HNL to HND in 1971. We were bussed to a hotel for a complimentary night's stay just off Waikiki.

This will be a very fun way for them to light money on fire. No other purpose for this flight.

usflyer123 wrote:

is there really a demand for Hawaii-Switzerland? i could understand London but Switzerland is tiny for that kind of route.

Possibly. Due to their buying power, the Swiss travel a lot. Even if the population is a mere 8 million. Further, the catchment area around ZRH includes a lot of southern Germany, as well as western Austria. How many passengers go through ZHR every year? Nearly 30 million. That is a number of times the Swiss population.

If there is ever a direct, non-stop flight between Europe and Hawaii it would be strange to see it go so deep into Europe as Switzerland. The direction to Hawaii is straight north and I would think that airlines based in northern Europe would make more sense. Perhaps at OSL, HEL or KEF. The local market is small of course in terms of population but the Nordic's purchasing power and thirst for sun makes them punch far above their weight for destinations like Hawaii. Then there are the potential connections to the rest of Europe.

jeffrey1970 wrote:

Will this airline be the first European airline to fly to HNL?

No, BOAC has served HNL before. As SFOThinker pointed out already. It was cool to see the myriad of carriers that used HNL as a stop during the 60's, 70's & 80's. And from 11pm to 5am it was a bustling city, now it's pretty dead at those hours, after the West Coast red-eyes leave.

From the official chronicle of Hawaii Aviation and an old (archived) thread here:

- A Lufthansa A340 was flown in before it entered actual service with the airline for a publicity stunt in 1992.

- Caledonian flew charters from London via Vancouver to Honolulu with a DC-10 in 1993.

- Balair (former Swissair subsidiary) started charter flights from Zurich in November 1994. These lasted about 5 or 6 years IIRC, but I can't recall where they landed for fuel. They used their Airbus A310s, which had nowhere near the range required from ZRH to HNL, so surely they would have landed in Anchorage (the old thread mentions Calgary though) on both ways ...

http://aviation.hawaii.gov/events/chronology/1990-1999/
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=109447

JOEL

b747400erf wrote:

Hawaiian should serve Europe from their HNL-JFK route and end this dream of a European airline going to Hawaii.

...or, they should do the much more sensible thing:
Continue to transfer their Euro pax to multiple carriers over multiple gateways-- like they're doing now.

No sense wasting their limited fleet chasing tag-ons.

Someone from central Europe please correct me if I'm off base, but my impression from seeing advertisements in Europe ove the winter is that Europeans generally go to the Canary Islands if looking for a cheaper package type beach holiday, go to the Maldives, or Reunion is you want to spend a bit more money, or go to Thailand if you don't mind a 10+ hour trip. That's what it seems to me they think of for "exotic" tropical beach vacations. Hawaii is very much a small niche market. I can't imagine ZRH to HNL is more than 20 PEWD.

This is definitely planned as a nonstop, just read the subtitle (or get your friendly Germans to help you out):
"Ferien in der Südsee ohne lästiges Umsteigen: Die Schweizer Fluglinie Edelweiss denkt über einen Direktflug Zürich–Honolulu nach."
="Vacation in the south sea without annoying plane changes: Swiss carrier Edelweiss is thinking about a Direct Zurich-Honolulu flight.

Again further down:
"Ohne Zwischenstopp würde der Flug mindestens 15 Stunden dauern. Zum Vergleich: Mit Umsteigen braucht man von Zürich nach Honolulu über 20 Stunden."
=Without intermediate stops, the flight would take at least 15 hours. By comparison, with connections you need over 20 to go from Zurich to Honolulu.

If they are talking about making this a regular route, then we should be talking about a pool where the winner accurately predicts either: (1) the speed with which it is cancelled; or (2) how much money they lose if they run it for two seasons without pulling the plug.

Another aviation venture that seems only viable to the overly-optimistic. Every time some idiotic scheme comes up in the media, like SkyBus or Hooters Air or God-help-us PeoplExpress II or Allegiant-going-to-Hawaii, those of us who wish them well because it's new and different also know, deep down, that it ain't gonna work, because there is some deep logical flaw that the promoters have glossed over (or want us to take on faith that they can solve with something up their sleeve). And it never, ever works.

LH707330 wrote:

This is definitely planned as a nonstop, just read the subtitle (or get your friendly Germans to help you out):
"Ferien in der Südsee ohne lästiges Umsteigen: Die Schweizer Fluglinie Edelweiss denkt über einen Direktflug Zürich–Honolulu nach."
="Vacation in the south sea without annoying plane changes: Swiss carrier Edelweiss is thinking about a Direct Zurich-Honolulu flight.

Again further down:
"Ohne Zwischenstopp würde der Flug mindestens 15 Stunden dauern. Zum Vergleich: Mit Umsteigen braucht man von Zürich nach Honolulu über 20 Stunden."
=Without intermediate stops, the flight would take at least 15 hours. By comparison, with connections you need over 20 to go from Zurich to Honolulu.

Not wanting to split hairs, but 'direct' and 'nonstop' are two very different things. The two statements appear contradictory, though.

For my two cents, could they be contemplating a service using a Swiss aircraft operated by Swiss tech crew and Edelweiss cabin crew?

DeltaB717 wrote:

LH707330 wrote:

This is definitely planned as a nonstop, just read the subtitle (or get your friendly Germans to help you out):
"Ferien in der Südsee ohne lästiges Umsteigen: Die Schweizer Fluglinie Edelweiss denkt über einen Direktflug Zürich–Honolulu nach."
="Vacation in the south sea without annoying plane changes: Swiss carrier Edelweiss is thinking about a Direct Zurich-Honolulu flight.

Again further down:
"Ohne Zwischenstopp würde der Flug mindestens 15 Stunden dauern. Zum Vergleich: Mit Umsteigen braucht man von Zürich nach Honolulu über 20 Stunden."
=Without intermediate stops, the flight would take at least 15 hours. By comparison, with connections you need over 20 to go from Zurich to Honolulu.

Not wanting to split hairs, but 'direct' and 'nonstop' are two very different things. The two statements appear contradictory, though.

For my two cents, could they be contemplating a service using a Swiss aircraft operated by Swiss tech crew and Edelweiss cabin crew?

It has been explained by another poster above. In German the terms 'direct' and 'nonestop' are much closer together. You cant just 'transfer' the destinction from the English language. From the context and usage of the word 'Direktflug' in the article, they refer to a nonstop flight.

NH203 wrote:

DeltaB717 wrote:

LH707330 wrote:

It has been explained by another poster above. In German the terms 'direct' and 'nonestop' are much closer together. You cant just 'transfer' the destinction from the English language. From the context and usage of the word 'Direktflug' in the article, they refer to a nonstop flight.

Fair enough, thanks

wjcandee wrote:

If they are talking about making this a regular route, then we should be talking about a pool where the winner accurately predicts either: (1) the speed with which it is cancelled; or (2) how much money they lose if they run it for two seasons without pulling the plug.

If by "regular route" you mean daily year round then no I don't think that's even in the conversation. However, Edelweiss has a long history of operating seasonal long haul routes to leisure destinations catering to slightly more premium customers. One example: ZRH-LAS isn't exactly a throbbing market. The route started with 2x weekly in peak season and dropped 1x weekly in the off-season. You could say the same about SAN. I'm sure that if they're saying that they're looking at starting ZRH-HNL that they know what they're talking about. A seasonal 1x or 2x weekly flight from ZRH shouldn't be too difficult to fill, and combined with low fuel costs, incentives from Hawaii and an above average customer base, should actually turn a profit. Having said that, they are starting Mauritius which in my opinion, overlaps with Hawaii in terms of the customer base, so that in itself may be the biggest challenge.

airbazar wrote:

wjcandee wrote:

If they are talking about making this a regular route, then we should be talking about a pool where the winner accurately predicts either: (1) the speed with which it is cancelled; or (2) how much money they lose if they run it for two seasons without pulling the plug.

If by "regular route" you mean daily year round then no I don't think that's even in the conversation. However, Edelweiss has a long history of operating seasonal long haul routes to leisure destinations catering to slightly more premium customers. One example: ZRH-LAS isn't exactly a throbbing market. The route started with 2x weekly in peak season and dropped 1x weekly in the off-season. You could say the same about SAN. I'm sure that if they're saying that they're looking at starting ZRH-HNL that they know what they're talking about. A seasonal 1x or 2x weekly flight from ZRH shouldn't be too difficult to fill, and combined with low fuel costs, incentives from Hawaii and an above average customer base, should actually turn a profit. Having said that, they are starting Mauritius which in my opinion, overlaps with Hawaii in terms of the customer base, so that in itself may be the biggest challenge.

I agree with most except for the Mauritius being the "cannibal" part.
Both Hawaii and Mauritius fit perfectly for what Edelweiss does. The current crop of retired baby boomers and well-off young professionals are all about completing their bucket list before it's too late. Both island clusters are probably on that list. If we're talking 1-2 weekly flights it's all good! To a certain segment of the market, it's all about a checklist of destinations "conquered" in life, not about repeat visits.
Edelweiss has the perfect set up for this.