Turns out the school-bus spirit never left – it just flies Swiss
Were school buses ever part of your academic routine? Were you packed off to the end of the driveway with your lunch, books, overstuffed pencil case and sports gear in your backpack to be picked up by a functional vehicle (in my case yellow) rammed with schoolmates of varying ages and occasionally a monitor to keep things in check? Did you have a friend who saved you a seat? Were you a loner who sat at the front? And did you make faces at the drivers when you pulled up at stoplights? Or perhaps you were so bold as to press your bum up against the window? I believe that might have been called a “pressed ham”. I didn’t have many years of school buses but I look back at those chilly mornings in Hudson, Quebec, with a certain fondness as the 20-minute circuit to get to campus created a certain camaraderie that wouldn’t have happened if we’d all been shuttled by our parents.
Four decades on, and it feels a bit the same when I fly in and out of Zürich on home carrier, Swiss. With an out-of-proportion airport compared to its population (Zürich proper has around 500,000 inhabitants), it’s perhaps the best-served city in the world when it comes to both short and long-haul connections – yet it also remains familiar and cosy. Swiss isn’t Air France or Cathay Pacific when it comes to the size of its long-haul fleet but with 30-odd Airbuses and Boeings (and 10 new A350-900s inbound) it does a good job of touching down in most of the places that I need to go.
North America is best served, there’s a highly profitable route to São Paulo that some days connects on to Buenos Aires and I mostly fly its routes to Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangkok. I’ve been doing these jaunts for quite a while now and it’s almost a given that I’ll be familiar with at least two crew members in the cabin, will have met the captain a couple of times and likely know one or two passengers seated nearby. This is when one of their Boeing 777s starts to feel a bit like a school bus for grown-ups.
On my return from Tokyo Narita the other day, one of the Japanese crew came by toward the end of the flight, clutching a crisply folded shopping bag from Books Kinokuniya and a black pen. She introduced herself as Maya-san and said that she was a fan of not just Monocle but my Monocle on Sunday radio show. “When we couldn’t fly during the pandemic, your show was my connection to Switzerland and the world,” she explained. “I would be most honoured if you signed my copy of the magazine.” There are many perks that come with this job but a ‘Maya moment’ ranks at the top when you realise that all of the paper, ink and airtime does have a proper point of connection with exactly the kind of people we all imagine (hope!) that we’re writing and producing for.
As the flight was on a Saturday, Maya showed up the following morning to watch the show live from our studio at Dufourstrasse in Zürich, and across the two hours also met other contributors, readers and listeners. Yesterday, I boarded the LX180 to Bangkok and, as I was settling in, a gentleman across the cabin nodded and waved. A regular at Dufourstrasse, he was on his way to meet his partner in the Thai capital and as drinks were poured and orders taken the captain came round to introduce himself and discuss the route, the jetstream over the Himalayas and the belly full of cargo. “Watches heading to boutiques in Bangkok?” I asked. “I couldn’t possibly say,” he winked. At that point, the café regular popped over to show me a picture of a vehicle on his phone. “It’s a 1950s Ferrari and I need to convince the other half that it’s what we need. What do you think?” he asked. In an instant I was back on the school bus in Hudson, except that I would have been looking at a Corgi Toys catalogue with my friend Peter and he would have been showing me the cars that he was hoping Santa would bring for Christmas. “You need to convince her that the car is a must,” I said. “And I’ll happily assist when we get to Bangkok, if a drink is required.”
Brands can get carried away with fancy new cabins, destinations and menus but an Airbus is still an Airbus, a Boeing a Boeing. Leadership needs to remember that it is people, both staff and passengers, that define a brand and cosy proportions are far better than the impersonal and oversized.
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