Swiss International Air Lines Reviews 

No customer service, only AI. Terrible experience with 8 hour layover, offered us nothing. Only two agents working in Zurich line was around the corner. Airplane WiFi was down. Just a joke of an airline. I was one and done flying this. Sticking with Airfrance in the future

Cancelled a flight. No advice given at the airport - what to do, where to go, set expectations. Just someone handing out poorly worded leaflets.

With around 100 passengers standing in line for the support desk (to be rerouted etc) they inexplicably just closed the desk at 10pm and went home - absolutely no customer care whatsoever.

Bear in mind they are bound by certain rules - one being “right to care” obligations.

As a result left int he airport overnight with no solution.

On their amateurish online chat the only advice given was a flight in 24 hours time to London (the flight was to Manchester). When advising the muppet that we needed to go to Manchester (or further north) they offered Manchester in 3 days time.

The under trained (and rude) advisor ignored the question about their duty to care and offered no advice on accommodation etc.

In fact she only tried to scaremonger me by saying they’d only pay for part of the flight - this is false as they have a duty to reroute to get us home as early as possible.

I pressed her on better flight options and saw one leaving in the morning via Alicante (Swiss + / Jet2) via Skyscanner and she said that she couldn’t see it online. I gave her the flight number but she ignored that too. I asked for this to be escalated to a capable person and was given a phone number that was out of service! Then she ended the call as she couldn’t help any further.

When I tried the automated rebooking service it wanted to fly me via flaming Ethiopia!!

Zero customer service - terrible technology. Trains monkeys would do a better job

My advice to anyone reading this - avoid this airline at all costs - they are not fit for purpose. Only RyanAir comes close for zero customer service.

My 11:00 a.m. flight from Geneva was cancelled, they rebooked it with Lufthansa at 6:00 a.m. the next day on a lower class seat. Nelly, Swiss's AI chat couldn't even understand and put me on a wait list of 611 people ahead of me!!!! There is no way to get my money back through this airline. Terrible terrible customer service and lone of the worst airlines that I have had to deal with.

Apparently we were upgraded without notice (or request) from premium economy with seats we had picked to business but they separated me and my travel partner without asking. The seats in business are quite hard. There is no specific a/c so I was a bit warm (not too bad). The food looked amazing but was borderline inedible but there was plenty of food. The equipment to charge phone, adjust seats etc is hidden (not user friendly or intuitive). Terrible design.

The service however was excellent.

In business, my window seat (now next to a stranger) was blocked because he immediately converted his seat to a bed. Bottom line- it was far a far worse experience than on my previous coach trips on Swiss with an extra leg room upgrade - Miami-Zurich. It was far worse than any coach class that I normally take on any airline.

We flew Swiss Air LX 18 from Zurich to Newark airport on Aug 27. The pre boarding service was excellent. The airline kept us informed and the boarding service was excellent.
However, the interior of the plane was nasty. Seems in economy han no leg room for the 8 hour flight. A seat next to me was broken. The flight attendant wound up taping it together. The seat directly in front of my son was also broken, whereby the passenger in front almost crushed in when he leaned back too far. The poor passenger in front told the flight attendant that he needed another seat, but was told there were none available, so the poor guy had to sit upright without comfortably leaning back in his seat the entire flight.
The plane seemed a bit dirty, and the food service was skimpy. Before landing at Newark, passengers were served potato salad and a piece of bread, rather than something with protein,
The flight attendants were, however kind and attentive but also at a loss to solve the interior problems.
This was the only time I had a bad experience with this airline, and it discourages me from using them going forward

I was charged 113 EUROS for checking a bag that I had previously received an email encouraging us to check our carryon bags. The gate attendent treated us very abruptly and that we had no options. Then the main return flight from Zurich to Washington DC was delayed by over 3 hours due to a number of reasons. The only compensation was a serving of water and a small cheese cup. The time between transfer flights was also short because the flight from Florence was late in arrival. I am handicapped with a prosthetic but there was no choice but to try and walk very fast. Once the plane was in the air, it was so cold in the cabin that everyone was freezing. I asked the attendent could the temperature be adjusted and she said that was not possible and that it was even colder in the rear of the plane.

Swiss should be named EasyJet 2 but overpriced with the new regulations of no 8kg baggage included anymore in the basic ticket. Not even a proper backpack to hold. Also, their personnel in Athens airport was very disrespectful towards the passengers!

If you'd like to pay 1500 USD 6 months before the flight date to fly with your family with small kids, just to be waitlisted in the end, leaving my wife to face the risk of flying alone with the small kids, then this is the airline for you. Don't expect ANY sympathy or support from neither the help-line, the check-in, nor the gate staff. Also, after, by chance managing to get on the flight in the last minute (that I had paid for! ), the interior quality and the TV screens was arguably 20 years old (the engineers had to board to fix one of the chairs in the plane). Luckily, the small bite of chicken they served was of ok quality (but of laughable quantity). This is in no way representative of the quality of what Made-in-Switzerland should stand for.

On the overbooking: Swiss was still trying to sell online seats (for outragous prices) for the flight where I was being waitlisted...How is overbooking still legal!

Absolutely useless and makes excuses for cancelled flights so you can’t get compensation with a total lack of evidence.
You cannot even respond to a message they send, like their word is god!

Will absolutely be avoiding this airline and would rather fly budget. Definitely not Swiss Quality!! Avoid

Ah, Swiss International Air Lines: bringing you the precision of a Swiss watch, provided that watch is specifically calibrated to count down the exact seconds until they can extract £60 from your wallet.
​Flying out of London City Airport, my family and I checked a bag and kept only tiny under-seat bags for the cabin. Or so we thought. Enter the gate crew, who were operating on a high-voltage power trip normally reserved for small-town dictators. They ordered us to test our bags in a sizing frame that looked suspiciously like it was designed to accommodate a single pop-tart.
​Naturally, our bags failed the toaster test and had to pay 120 pounds..
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We weren't alone. Half the gate was getting clipped in what felt less like an airline boarding process and more like an organized shakedown.
​seemed like a lovely little revenue stream that undoubtedly funded the microscopic, complimentary square of chocolate we received at 30,000 feet. Bon appétit.
​When Ryanair and EasyJet—the undisputed heavyweight champions of nickel-and-diming—offer a warmer, more reasonable experience than a legacy flag carrier, you know the simulation is glitching.
​First and absolute last time flying with Swiss. Next time I want to be squeezed into a tiny metal box and stripped of my cash, I'll just stay home and jump into an actual toaster.

Horrific customer service. AVOID.
Was trying to add an infant to an existing booking. With any other airline, task is DIY and takes 2 mins . Instead Swiss Air force you to to contact them to perform the simple task. You are forced to start through their chat and face their useless AI bot. Eventually I got to chat to a human who was 100% unhelpful and stopped responding at a random point followed by a website crash. If you are lucky enough to find their hidden phone lines, you will deal with inexplicably slow processes (I've been on the line with the agent for 30 minutes and still unclear what he is doing/whether he is adding the infant) and hard to understand customer agents (not aided by a lot of of background noise).
Unbelievable!!

What a shame Swiss airlines has become we booked a flight and charged as more for the hand luggage before the boarding.

70 francs per person is a joke.
In the plane you get a water for a ticket of 400 franks.

Looks like Swiss is getting worse than Ryanair

They were very kind - gave us complimentary chocolate and bottled water. I wish I could submit photos. Bags came out ahead of schedule and flight was 10 mins early. Big win

I had to re-book my flights. My ticket allowed a re-booking for the price of 80 euro, plus some new taxes.
While re-booking, their on-line system worked fine until I had made the payment -- then I got an error message telling me that the re-booking didn't go through. BUT -- the reservation of my money on my bank account was done anyway.
Tried to call support, many times. They didn't even understand what I said. One support girl tried to give me a completely new booking, i.e. I should have to pay full cost for new tickets one again!!
Instead, I tried making a re-booking again on-line (in spite of not having had my amount back for the previous attempt), now using my son's computer. The same thing happened: I got an error message AFTER the payment was done. So now SWISS held two reservation amounts of total ca 210 euro on my bank account.
I called the support a number of times. They couldn't see that any re-booking was done, and therefore there weren't any problems....The only help I got was a man giving me the mail address to "documents" where I could enclose screen shots from my bank account as well as screen shots from the re-booking. I wrote to them 3 times. No answer. I filled the form on their web site and enclosed every screen shot I had. No answer. So my first flights departed August 11th, of course exactly the one I've tried urgently to re-book because I simply couldn't go. Today, August 17th, I got an e-mail from SWISS with an urgent quest of calling them. I did. They only wanted to tell me that I was absent at my departure the 11th, and that I still could re-book my return flights for a cost. I tried to ask them about my three e-mails and the form I send. She couldn't answer, but sounded more like an AI, only repeating the message that I was absent on my outbound flights, but that I could re-book my return flight for a cost. SO -- the result is that I have to pay for the errors SWISS airlines have made. Furthermore, they let go of the first reservation on my bank account, but they still hold the second one, made August 9th. We'll see if I ever get those 105 euro back or not... Anyway, this has been an extremely expensive and tiresome experience since SWISS doesn't take responsibility for their booking system, nor their system of keeping money reservations at peoples bank accounts -- nor take responsibilities for their non existent help from their support. And if I could give negative stars here at Trustpilot, I of course would.

Shocking service. If zero stars had been an option, I would have given it.
We pre-booked and paid for specific seats, only to have them changed. We also paid for carry-on luggage, but were then told our bags had to be taken and placed in the hold because the flight was full.

What made this particularly frustrating was that some passengers were allowed to keep their carry-ons, while our family of four was not, despite all the overhead bins being empty. We explained that we had a connecting flight and needed access to our luggage, but this was completely ignored. There was no understanding or flexibility whatsoever.

The flight did not take off on time.

Overall, an extremely disappointing experience and very poor customer service. I will not be choosing Swiss air again.

Extremely small seats in Economy which resulted in a horrible experience flying Zürich to Chicago. The person in front of me reclined his seat - which should not be an option in such small seats. Unfortunately when I asked if he could sit upright- he said no. We were boarded and then told flight was delayed - this made trip total to 11 hours. In flight snack was odd to say the least - potato salad, a piece of French bread and cheesecake. I passed this carb load. I guess I expected more for an almost $3000 round trip ticket. Will avoid this airline in the future.

I have booked a flight from JFG to GVA (New York to Geneva) for my wife and I, including a pet.

I was able to do the booking for the pet on the way there but not on the way back. It said to call the 800 number to add it.

I received a confirmation shortly after booking the flight, including the $135 surcharge for the dog (in cabine).

I called the 800 number (in the US), after several calls I was told that even though my booking email said "confirmed", they reserve the right to cancel the reservation on the way back, up to a week before the flight. They would give us the option to rebook but presumably would have to pay additional cost if the fair is higher (which it certainly would as price 1 week before are higher than 1 month before).

Because the flight on the way back Is not (fully) confirmed, I could not add the dog for the return. There are only 6 spots on this flight, so we might be on that actual flight, but without a spot for the dog.

Since leaving your pet behind is not typically an option for most dog owners (sarcasm), I paid $565 to so call "confirm for sure" a flight back.

The system was down, so they could not add the dog at the same time, but was assured that it would happen.

A week later, I called again to add a dog on the way back. They sharged me $135+$80 (processing fee) to add a dog. But it will take days to be confirmed.

So the extra cost are so far "$565 + $80=645" in addition to the extra 2x $135 (dog in cabine surcharge). Total is $915.

It is crazy because the $645 were not mentioned in any way. They say its in part because of the economy flex; but when asked if higher level of economy class, they could not confirm/infirm that it would not also have happened.

I am very very dissatisfied.

"we are working on your request. Please do not need this page." how many hours do you want me to stay here?
Same on the website
Same on the app
Endless loop, endless loop

When you are on the flight (if it isn't delayed) it isn't too bad, my immigration flight to switzerland was actually pleasent.

However, the online AI tools and lack of contact options is disgraceful. When I finally got through to someone they just said 'I can't help you' and gave me a link to another list of forms that I don't have the details to flesh out.

Tip - Remove AI tools, have a customer service email address and look after your customers. I won't be flying Swiss again in the future.

I thought SWISS was supposed to be a very good airline, but unfortunately my experience was really disappointing.

They complained that my backpack was 2 cm too big and charged me €70. The only reason it was slightly bigger was because I had some items I had just bought at Duty Free. I even tried to take those items out and carry them separately in a smaller bag, but they wouldn’t allow me to do that.

I’ve been travelling with this same backpack for almost 10 years, mostly with Ryanair, and I’ve never had an issue like this before.

Very disappointing experience, especially from an airline I expected to have much better customer service.

I definitely wouldn’t recommend SWISS. If you have another option, choose another airline!!!