SWISS and SBB are expanding their joint Air Rail product from Geneva Airport. The Western Swiss towns of Vevey, Montreux, Sion, Sierre, Visp and Brig will all now be more conveniently linked into the SWISS route network. So SWISS travellers to Switzerland can enjoy smooth onward rail services to further popular vacation destinations.

Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) and the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) work continually to refine their joint product and service portfolio and further enhance the interlinks between air and rail transport. As part of these endeavours, Switzerland’s leading airline and SBB are expanding their SWISS Air Rail intermodal product from Geneva Airport. The new linking of the Western Swiss towns of Vevey, Montreux, Sion, Sierre, Visp and Brig to the SWISS route network will enable SWISS customers arriving in Switzerland to travel smoothly on to various popular vacation resorts in Canton Valais such as Crans-Montana, Verbier, Zermatt and Saas-Fee. The new SWISS Air Rail options are bookable as of 11 June.

“Our successful strategic partnership with SBB provides substantial added value for our customers,” says Heike Birlenbach, SWISS’s Chief Commercial Officer. “This smart interlinking of air and rail transportation delivers a seamless and thus a more relaxing overall travel experience. It fits fully with the times, and it meets a genuine customer need. So I’m delighted that we can now offer our SWISS travellers this Air Rail service to even more destinations in Switzerland.”

“The expansion of the SWISS Air Rail product to these new destinations in the cantons of Vaud and Valais is a great example of customer-oriented multimodal mobility that provides clear customer benefits,” adds Véronique Stephan, Member of the SBB Management Board and Head of Passenger Services Markets. “Working together, we and SWISS are building further bridges between air and rail transport, and are enabling our shared customers to get smoothly and comfortably from the airport to the Alps. We’re inviting them jointly aboard.”

Flexible travel planning

As well as ensuring the smoothest possible rail links between additional points in Switzerland (particularly tourist resorts) and SWISS’s global route network, SWISS Air Rail continues to focus on providing direct rail connections and on optimizing customer service in the event of any operational irregularity. SWISS Air Rail can be booked in conjunction with a SWISS flight on www.swiss.com or via any travel agency. Customers can simply give one of the rail stations available as their point of departure or destination and then book the entire air-plus-rail trip in a single step.

When embarking on their journey, the traveller need only check-in once, and will then be issued with their boarding pass (which includes their rail ticket) directly from SWISS. SWISS Air Rail customers can also use their rail ticket one day after their SWISS arrival (or one day before their SWISS departure) if they prefer, which gives them greater flexibility in their travel planning.

SWISS customers on all SWISS Air Rail routes are also offered a connection guarantee in the event of a delay. And if they’re Miles & More members, they’ll earn miles and points for their rail travel, too, with the mileage and points amounts awarded determined by their connecting flight and class of air travel. SWISS First and SWISS Business guests also travel first class by train.

This further expansion brings the intermodal SWISS Air Rail network to 17 destinations. SWISS Air Rail is already available to and from Geneva Cornavin (Geneva’s main station), Fribourg, Bern, Interlaken, Lausanne, Lucerne, Lugano, Bellinzona and Basel in Switzerland, Munich in Germany and Bregenz in Austria.