Economy Class on Swiss' A330-300 DEL-ZRH: The worst flight of my life
So having flown SWISS before on intra-european routes, I was kind-of looking forward to try their longhaul product for the first time. As SWISS is my home airline, I flew with them quite a lot from their hub in Zurich, but always opted for other airlines when it came to long-haul.
However, I snatched a good deal with LX for my Malaysia Trip, which consisted of a 747 leg on LH from Frankfurt to Singapore and 2 Malaysia Airlines legs from SIN to KUL and from KUL to DEL.
Never having flown MH before, I really wanted to try it and I found it interestring to see airlines from another alliance cooperate with SWISS.
My expectations for this leg were low, being used from previous short haul Swiss-flights, but what I had to endure on this flight is no where near to where I expected it.
I was actually not planning on reviewing this flight, therefore I did not take a lot of pictures.
Pre-Boarding
Prior to boarding, I already got the first taste of "Swissness" when the gate agents announced, they had some J seats left and if anyone wanted to upgrade. Initally, I considered (who would not?), especially since gate upgrades are mostly cheap. Well…. if you had 1'700 CHF (2100USD) left. Apparently Swiss considered this an appropriate price for an upgrade on a 6h flight. I decided against and unsurprisingly, no one else considered to upgrade, which led the gate agents to lower their offer to 1'500 CHF. Then they gave up.
Boarding
The aircraft was HB-JHJ, an Airbus A330-300, which was 14 years old at time of the flight.
Boarding was quite lenghty and some people had to switch seats because multiple people had the same seat on their boarding pass.
We also boarded around 20mins later than scheduled.
Cabin, IFE and Pre-Departure Checks
The cabin can be summarized in a single word: old.
The seats were dirty, armrests partly broken, headrests could not be adjusted and whenever I tried to recline my seat, it immediately went back into its standard position.
The legroom was below average and the screens were minimal.
Unsurprisingly, WI-FI was not available and the sockets did not work either. Combined with the instruction that power banks may not be used, I was really looking forward to a non-entertainment flight.
Non-Entertainment you may ask? Well there is a good selections of movies available on the IFE, but the AUX Port was not working so you had to watch them without sound. Further, the IFE was really slow, small and unresponsive. So what about the flight map?
Well, you CAN watch it, it's there. But it's outdated and two thirds of the time you will not be watching the map but rather advertisments of Breitling and other brands. Actually, for the first hour until after take off, the entire IFE was blocked and only ads were shown.
Security also seemed to not be of interest to the crew. When they went to the cabin for their final cabin check before take-off, multiple people had their windows closed, seat reclined (at least theirs worked) and seatbelts not fastened. Cabin crew just passed by, looked at them but didn't bother to correct.
Meal Service (or what it was supposed to be)
You would expect a full-course meal on a 6h long-haul flight in a full-service carrier, wouldn't you?
Sorry to disappoint you. We got a sandwich and our choice of drinks. And that's it. That's Swiss' 1000 CHF flight economy dinner.
AMAZING!
For the remainder of the flight, no more drinks were served. When I asked a bypassing flight attendant for another soda, she told me to "get it yourself. It's in the galley". What a nice attitude. Every single one of the flight attendants was incredibly rude, harsh and some of them could only speak broken german.
At least I got to see a nice sunrise on approach into Zurich.
Earned Miles and Customer Service
After the flight, I was credited a generous amount of 16 Miles on Miles and More. After pointing this out to their customer service, they told me that they recently switched to a new calculation formula and that the amount is correct. I then sent them back my calculation and asked them to kindly point out theirs. After two weeks of no contact, I noticed that they had credited an extra 1700 Miles for the flight. I never received an answer to my mail tho.
I also complained to Lufthansa afterwards (since the flight was on a Lufthansa Issued ticket) and was actually suprised when they apologied and offered me compensation as an apology. Until I saw that they were offering EUR 0.65. (minus 10 cent processing fee If I want a bank transfer instead of a voucher.)
