Review of SWISS flight from Stockholm to Zurich in Economy

A Stressful Start

Hello and welcome to another series!

This is my first trip of 2025 and will cover a hop across the Atlantic to the USA. But first, we'll have to take a flight across Europe from Stockholm to Zurich. Stockholm was chosen as it was much cheaper than flying from London and I wanted some time to explore the city for a bit. I've always wanted to visit Sweden, and I feel winter's the best time with all the snow, although that's probably just me not having seen snow for a number of years in London. 

This is also my first time flying Swiss since 2018 so I'm very curious as to how the airline is now compared to 7 years (gosh, time flies, doesn't it?) ago. 

I aim to offset all of my CO2 emissions from flights. All emissions are calculated using the ICAO Carbon Emissions Calculator and I will be funding projects approved by The Gold Standard.

Stockholm Arlanda Airport (ARN)

Taking the first (4am) Arlanda Express train to the airport. At SEK340 ($30) for the 18-minute ride, it's pretty expensive. However, there are discounts for anyone under 25 and seniors and it's much, much faster than the coach, which takes around an hour with multiple stops along the way. 

Quick photo of the arrivals area on the lower floor. 

Because the first train only departed at 4:20, I had only 90 minutes before my flight. Normally, this shouldn't be an issue, especially at 5am. However, because Swiss shares the check-in area with other Lufthansa Group airlines, most people there were on later flights. It wasn't helped when all 3 economy desks were clogged up with people who had issues. It took around 20 minutes for one of those desks to finally clear and I was able to check-in. Admittedly, I was very unlucky as I would've saved those 20 minutes had I joined the queue just a few minutes earlier. 

At the front of the line with a nice overview of the entire space. The whole process took 40 minutes, which is ridiculous for a short-haul flight at 5am. 

With just 20 minutes until boarding, I'm now rushing to security hoping it wouldn't be too crowded. 

Yesss!!! Security cleared in under 3 minutes, thank goodness! 

Thanks to Swedish efficiency, I now have time to pause for some photos. 

Lots of nice cars on display here. 

A Sunclass A330-900neo heading to…. somewhere warm. 

A lot of cafes/restaurants here, except they're all closed this early. 

Walking to the gate - I made it around 10 minutes before boarding. 

The flight

Flight time to Zurich will be around 2 hours and here's our route: 

Photo of the seats during boarding - they're the standard European ironing-board seats. 

Seatback pocket and tray table. 

Legroom is good, better than average for inter-European flights. 

Load factor for today's flight is 15%, which is woefully low with most of the passengers seated over the wings. 

View out of the window with a Lufthansa A321 heading to Frankfurt (FRA) and a Scandinavian A320neo heading to sunny Palma de Mallorca (PMI).

A quick de-ice of the wings before pushback. De-icing is always sooo cool (no pun intended) to me, being from a place that never gets snow and barely any ice. 

Surprisingly, the windows didn't get too wet during the de-icing, making photos still (barely) possible. View of the terminal area with a Swiss A220 heading to Geneva (GVA). There are a lot of Lufthansa Group departures in the morning so you can see why check-in took so long. 

Takeoff on time. You can see Stockholm on the right. Sorry for the terrible quality, a lack of light and a wet-ish window doesn't make a great combination for photos haha. 

Interestingly, the overhead screens weren't stowed during takeoff. Most airlines do it for safety during takeoff/landing but Swiss doesn't? 

Yeah, I have no idea what town/cities those are… apart from they're in Sweden (probably). 

Shortly after takeoff, the crew came around with a bottle of water. No complimentary snacks or anything on Swiss these days. ;(

Let's have a look at the contents of the seatback pocket, which includes a safety card…

… an air-sickness bag…

… and a buy-onboard and duty-free catalogue. All the prices are in Swiss Francs so I have no idea how they compare haha. Swiss has also moved to a digital inflight magazine. 

Also a wireless headphone adaptor for airline IFEs? (See last photo). That is soo cool! I never realized that's even possible, I wonder if it works for older double-jacked IFEs. 

After that, I slept for most of the flight (I slept for like 2 hours the night before… pains of an early morning flight, I guess). 

Sunrise over Germany. 

Around 40 minutes before landing, the crew came around with the signature Swiss chocolates. I know Lufthansa also do this, but Swiss' chocolates are the best in my opinion. 

View of the Alps during descent.

First views of land! 

I love this photo with the golden sun reflecting off the wings. It looks so much better in person though… 

On final approach. 

Welcome to a cold Switzerland! We arrived on time. Apparently, temperatures here are around -2°C so we travelled 2 hours south for… no change in temperature. I keep forgetting how cold the rest of Europe is, being from the UK and taking the Jetstream for granted haha. 

Parked next to 2 airBaltic Swiss A220s heading to Manchester and London. Zurich's design is genius as it allows Schengen and Non-Schengen flights to park next to each other. Also yes, Swiss is wet leasing a few airBaltic planes, they've been doing that for quite a while now. 

Zurich Airport (ZRH)

Wow! An airport with a simple name! 

Here we are in the Schengen area. I'll be staying here for 5 hours before my long haul across the Atlantic, which will be my next FR in this series. Thanks for reading and see you there!

P.S. Bonus of Stockholm attached below, feel free to check that out! ;)