Flight Details
Flight: LX 38
Departure: Zurich, 1:15PM
Arrival: San Francisco, 4:05PM
Seat: 11A
This was my first time flying with Swiss in business class (last year, for complicated reasons, I got to experience their first class offering on the SFO-ZRH leg). Overall, the business class experience was good - the service standards were high, the food was ok, the staff were decent, the seat had some incredible characteristics (the storage!), but the amenities were weak, the seat wasn't actually great for sleeping, and boarding was delayed for quite a while with no notice nor explanation. I usually fly with United for business trips due to our corporate rates, so it was nice to see this comparison point (United still wins for the bedding, seat, and ice cream).
Service & Amenities
The service was really quite good. The ratio of staff to seats seemed much higher than most airlines for business class. I think we had 6 flight attendants working the cabin during the first meal service. 6! The level of service was also dramatically higher than most business class, evident by small things like choice of dressing for the salad (so novel!), staff doing many many passes through to remove empty dishes or to offer more drinks, and the FAs even building a custom menu for the person behind me who was both diabetic AND allergic to nuts, eggs, carrots, and a slew of other things.
They also kept us VERY well hydrated. Bottles of water were at our seats as we boarded, PDB offered as we settled in, initial drink service once underway, the beverage cart coming through between each course, AND an additional additional bottles of water brought after meal service. We were not going to go thirsty!
The staff were all very attentive, and kind, but not overly personable. It worked though - I never felt ignored nor needing them, and never felt smothered either.
Service-wise, Swiss exceeded my expectations for business class. The rest of the amenities though were another story.
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| Lackluster pillow and blanket. |
Waiting at our seats when we boarded was a small pillow and blanket. These looked like the kind many airlines have as just a day flight option, or provide in addition to a real pillow and duvet for sleeping. But no, this is it when it comes to bedding from Swiss. No mattress pad, just that very wimpy pillow, and the scratchy thin blanket. Ooph. I did ask if they had any extras, and was offered whatever I wanted. They had a big bag of them up front. If only they had thicker/nicer blankets, or a pillow with any loft. The bedding really is the only area that really really let me down. For a real overnight flight, I would not have liked this at all. It took about 3 pancake-pillows to match a standard United one for example.
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| Amenity kit. |
No slippers, no pjs, and just a simple amenity kit with the basics (toothbrush, lip gloss, ear plugs, eye mask). They clearly spend their money on staff, not amenities.
Cabin & Seat
I was on a 777-300ER, with a large 62 seat business class cabin. It had a front mini cabin of just two rows, and then the rest, separated by 3 bathrooms and the galley. Seats are either 2-2-2, or 1-2-1, alternating with some rows having the cherished "throne" seats. These seats can be reserved by status members free of charge, or you can pay extra to snag one.
The cabin was full, and the only 3 bathrooms were very backed up frequently. The final 1.5 hours of the flight literally had a line for the bathroom the entire time. It was also hard to reach the two on the other side of cabin, as the galley was a constant hub of activity, and there were so many staff members, that it wasn't possible much of the time to cross from the side with just one bathroom to the other in order to reach an available bathroom.
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| 11A - No window. |
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| Throne Seat. |
Here you can see the large window ledge, the storage cubby along the upper wall on that side, the lower cubbies under the ledge (2 of them, one ground level, one right below the ledge surface), and the cubby on the other side of the seat.
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| Narrow Foot Well. |
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| Storage Rack. |
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| Hanger, More Storage. |
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| Slide Out Cubby. |
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| Controls. |
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| Ledge. |
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| Pocket. |
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| Low Side Cubby. |
As if you need more in seat storage, there is a kinda huge cubby to the left of the seat that is as deep as the large sidewell. It has a door that can raise up or you can leave it open for easy access. You could easily fit a small backpack in here.
And then below that, along the ground level, is more cubby space, a sorta open bin, with a rail to hold things in. Great for sticking your shoes or that kind of thing you don't want to access frequently.
And then the tuna element, listed as "tuna pastrami".
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| Lower Cubby. |
Lunch/Dinner
Pre-departure beverages were offered from a tray, champagne or a non-alcoholic sparkling fruit drink. I asked for sparkling water, and not only was this provided, but a full bottle was given. I was so thankful, as I was parched, had just sprinted through the airport, and wasn't able to stop to get a drink.
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| Dinner? Menu. |
The first meal service began pretty promptly after the crew were allowed up. A flight attendant came through to take orders for those who hadn't pre-ordered a main, and to have everyone select a choice of starter. I never heard them mention being sold out, or asking for second choices, which was quite different from my usual United experience.
The onboard lineup of main dish selection was less extensive than what was available for preorder, with only 4 choices (veal goulash, chicken saltimbocca, sauteéd char, or asparagus fricassée), compared to pre-order which also included another veal option (sliced veal Zurich style with roesti), Alpine style macaroni, and a red vegetarian curry, and I think one other. I pre-ordered the asparagus, as it was asparagus season and I was in love with asparagus, but I was very, very tempted by the sound of the Alpine style macaroni, by the veal goulash (cream sauce! spinach pizokel!), and by the other veal dish. Reviews all say the curry is awful, the macaroni is good, and the sliced veal with roesti isn't a great choice because the roesti do not heat up well on a flight. I couldn't find *any* reviews of the asparagus, and thus, asparagus it was. For research of course.
For the starter, I had my choice of vegetarian carrot tartar or air-dried meat carpaccio. I would have been happy with either; the carrot tartar sounded fascinating, but the meat option was the special dish collaboration with the featured restaurant. Both came with an additional salad course, bread, and cheese.
This meal was somewhere between lunch/dinner in the time zone we were coming from, but middle of the night for our destination, so I have no idea what to call it. It was after 3pm when my meal was served.
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| Pinot Noir Spätlese Barrique 2022 / Weingut Davaz – Fläsch, Grisons AOC Sparkling Water / Nuts |
"The Davaz winery is located in Fläsch in the Bündner Herrschaft, Switzerland. Here, the Pinot Noir grape is king. The vineyards are surrounded by high mountains, where the grapes reach a beautiful ripeness as the warm “Föhn” wind blows through the valley. This smooth, elegant red boasts notes of wild strawberry, chocolate and plum and can be enjoyed as an accompaniment to meat, pasta or poultry dishes."
The drink cart came a bit later, with everything on the menu actually available (again, United, take notes!). I selected a wine, and was poured a small sample, the bottle held out and presented. Wow, what service! Since I didn't like it all that much, I asked to try another (given that they did just do a sample first!), which was no problem. I saw many people actually change their minds after their first selection. The guy in front of me tried all three reds.
I was offered lemon for my sparkling water, which I accepted.
Drinks were served with a ramekin of nuts, cashews only. Not warm.
After not caring for the French cab, I tried the Swiss pinot noir, and although I liked it less, I just went for it, so y FA wouldn't need to get me another fresh glass. It was fine, but really just a bit more tanin than I'd like. ***.
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| Meal Service, Round One. |
Our starters came served from another cart, along with bread basket, a salad, and cheese course. It was proceeded by another round of beverages, and refills as needed, from another cart, the two FAs working in unison.
I declined the bread, a choice of a roll or a sliced bread, I'm not sure what kind either were. On my tray already was a pat of butter, and a small bowl, I am not sure what the bowl was for.
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| Starter: Carrot Tartar. |
"Carrot tatar with puffed buckwheat, horseradish espuma, carrot and miso sauce with herb oil."
The carrot tartar was, well, carrot tartar. Finely diced raw carrot. Crunchy. Kinda interesting. Kinda odd to just eat like that though, tartar normally comes with crostini? I guess I could spread it on the bread? I didn't taste horseradish, but there was a little mound of something creamy in the middle. Tiny bit of puffed buckwheat for crunch. Attractive sprig of dill on top. The miso sauce with herb oil was too oily for my liking, so I'm glad it was on the side.
Overall, interesting, but odd to eat as-is. ***+.
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| Simple Salad. |
"Served with a seasonal salad French or Italian balsamic dressing."
Salads came with a choice of dressings, mini bottles presented at your seat. Woah. Another service element that was very unexpected in business class.
The salad was, well, tiny, but good. Fresh mixed greens, nothing else. Yay for radicchio. I used my own dressing, mixed in the carrot tartar, and added some tomatoes and additional greens I had with me to make it a bit more substantial. ***+.
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| Cheese Course. |
"Selection of cheese from the canton of Grisons Ftaner Bergrahmkäse, Andeerer Gourmet and Malögin with Swiss pear bread."
The cheese course also came with the starters, rather than later with dessert as is more standard with airline flow. The slice that looked like a date roll was Swiss pear bread, something I was not familiar with at all. My research shows this is a traditional thing though, usually pears and some other fruits, spices. It was actually pretty tasty, a small crust around a flavorful winter spiced filling. It went great with cheeses.
The cheeses were fine, but not great, although the menu certainly made them sound exciting. The Malögin (brie-like) cheese wasn't as soft and ripe as I prefer, but tasted decent. The hard cheese on the bottom was fairly classic sharp "Swiss" cheese taste. And finally, the softer wedge on top (from Grisons Ftaner Bergrahmkäse) was a bit boring, slight bit of funk to it, sorta akin to a munster.
Overall, reasonable but not special cheeses, and loved getting introduced to the pear bread. ***.
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| Main: Asparagus Fricassée. |
"Asparagus fricassée with mascarpone sauce / fried potatoes with rosemary, cherry tomatoes."
Before our main dishes were delivered, the drink cart came through yet a third time. Main dishes were then hand delivered one by one.
This wasn't quite what I imagined. It was basically a big bowl of creamy, rich mascarpone sauce, with some halves of small potatoes and a few slices of asparagus within, and a garnish of one piece each of white and green asparagus, and cherry tomato halves. But basically, a big bowl of creamy soup. I was expecting a dish of asparagus spears, smothered in a sauce, sure, but not primarily a soup. The description also said "fried potatoes with rosemary", so I thought those might be on the side. Uh, oops. I guess I don't know what fricassée really is?
Anyway, it was fine, but, a few things didn't work well. First, it was only lukewarm. A dish like this seems like one that they can easily get the temperature right on a flight, and it should hold temp ok too. Also, I guess my own fault as I didn't want the bread, but I really felt it needed something to dunk in the sauce/stew. Even pasta or rice would have worked. I would have settled for a spoon to eat it like soup, but my tray did not come with one. I wasn't sure what to do with this big bowl of creamy sauce, a fork, and a knife.
The mascarpone sauce base didn't taste like mascarpone to me, but it was clearly very rich and creamy, nicely thick. It didn't taste just like eating a bowl of cream, so, it worked. A touch more seasoning would have helped though. I used all the provided salt and pepper, and still wanted more. The potatoes were fine, and at least gave something substantial to have with the sauce, but they really were just halves of roast potatoes, not sure what was "fried" about them, and I didn't taste any rosemary. The small slices of asparagus within were fine too, but very small. The cherry tomatoes were sorta odd, as they were fresh (which I prefer, I don't really like cooked tomatoes), but fresh cherry tomatoes perched on top of warm cream sauce didn't quite come together for me. The single spears of asparagus on top were a bit soft.
So basically, it was all fine, but not the most cohesive meal. ***.
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| Dessert. |
"Chocolate cake with cherries in Röteli liqueur and vanilla mascarpone cream."
No choice was given for dessert, although they do have the ice cream available too. After dessert, a basket was passed with Lindt truffles (3 kinds), and if you did order coffee or tea, it came with a Swiss branded small chocolate.
The cake ... didn't look great. Pretty dry. Not a moist, welcoming chocolate cake. Alas.
It tasted as ho-hum as it looked. It wasn't dry actually, but it wasn't very chocolatey. I would have believed it wasn't chocolate cake, but rather just some kind of Swiss cake I wasn't familiar with. It had no particularly distinct flavor, and a fairly tight crumb structure. It was highly boring, and highly average. **+.
The cherries were stewed in liqueur, although I didn't taste much booze. They were fine. Cherries and chocolate are a good pairing. ***. The vanilla mascarpone cream was needed to jazz up the cake, but it needed far more. ***.
Overall, very blah. I recommend getting the ice cream to at least pair with it to jazz it up.
Coffee and tea were offered with the dessert, and a digestif cart followed a bit later with a large range of selections. Coffee was not pre-brewed, but rather, they have a Nespresso on board (!) and offered 3 selections of caffeinated styles, or decaf, all of which could be served as espresso, lungo, ristretto, or cappuccino. So far and above most business class coffee servings.
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| Vanilla Rooibos Tea. |
I sorta wanted the mint tea as I was cold, but neither of the FAs in my aisle knew if it had caffeine, and the bag didn't say, so I went safe with rooibos. It was fine, served with a small Swiss chocolate.
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| Original Swiss Etter Kirsch. |
I normally would go for port as my after dinner drink, but given the long list of digestifs, I felt inspired to do something different. Honestly, I was curious about all of them, but the kirsch seemed like it would pair well with the cherries and chocolate?
It was ... fine? It made me realize I'm not sure I've ever actually just sipped on kirsh, but I've definitely had cherries soaked in it before. No comparison point, so I can't really evaluate. I don't think I'd want it again, but it was interesting to try.
Snacks / Arrival Meal
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| "Bistro" Menu. |
Available anytime as a "Movie Snack", Mövenpick ice cream was available to order, and selection of sweet and savory snacks were available in the galley. I couldn't wait to order my ice cream!
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| Mövenpick Stracciatella. |
"The Swiss are known to be friendly but we do have a dark side. It’s called Stracciatella and we’ve sprinkled it through our ice cream."
It turns out, I didn't need to order it. About an hour after dinner concluded, the FAs came through with ice cream, two flavors, either mango (that might have been sorbet?), or stracciatella. I went for the later.
It was served at just the right temperature, not a hard brick, just slightly melty.
The savory snacks turned out to be popcorn (plain) or chips (sour cream and onion), and a couple packaged biscuits and chocolates, available in the galley to grab later on.
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| "Ham Sandwich". |
3.5 hours before arrival, the less friendly FA came through with a basket with ham sandwiches, and a few other items from the galley snack basket. Earlier up in the cabin she was offering multiple kinds of sandwich, or cheese, or a big bounty of snacks, but when she got to me, she just said, "snack or sandwich". I asked what kind of sandwich it was, and she said ham. I asked about the cheese, and she said if I wanted that she'd need to go check and come back, with such a tone of "don't make me do it" that I just grabbed the ham and cheese sandwich. It was odd, because the other FAs were so kind! There were still any rows behind me who also got no choice, and for the last few, the snacks even ran out, and she literally offered only the ham sandwiches, not even mentioning other options to them. It was the only service misstep in the entire journey.
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| Inside. |
Anyway, the sandwich turned out to be not good. The pretzel bun tasted stale, the two small pieces of Swiss cheese were haphazardly placed and a bit hard, the ham (I guess?) was very dark, chewy, and looked more like cured beef, there were a few gobs of mayo that weren't distributed (and no mustard like I'd want with ham and cheese!). The sprouts were a nice touch. But yeah, not tasty overall (although I did kinda like the strange meat). This is the quality I'd expect in economy class on a short haul, not business class, even for a snack. *.
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| Pre-arrival Meal. |
2 hours before landing was the arrival meal. It was 11pm where we came from, 2pm where we were headed. Like many ex-Europe second meals, it was kinda your choice of light lunch or something a bit more hearty. Two options, either a salad niçoise or vegetarian orecchiette pasta with tomato cream sauce and ratatouille. Both served with fruit salad. I definitely prefer BA style afternoon tea, but these selections do make some sense. I wasn't sure from the menu if the pasta was actually a warm meal or not.
The drink cart proceeded the meal. If I'm counting correctly, this was the 5th full pass with the drink cart! I do think it makes for faster service, and I'm not sure why more airlines don't use it more extensively. Maybe a staffing issue? We did have a FA going down each aisle with a cart, plus another FA doing meals behind, in addition to whomever was in the galley. After the meal, another basket came with chocolates, this time just larger size Swiss branded bars (not the Lindt truffles that came after lunch). If you care about drinks and chocolates, Swiss is the airline for you.
I opted the for salad, which came with bread (no choice this time) and a fruit salad.
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| Roll. |
The bread was an interesting roll, half white, half dark. Lightly warmed. It tasted reasonably fresh, and wasn't bad. No butter nor oil served with this meal though, and I really wanted some butter (and maybe jam) to make it more like afternoon tea. Still, not a bad roll. ***.
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| Fruit Salad. |
The fruit salad looked at first to have no melon, so I at least didn't need to send it back immediately due to my allergy. I plucked out a grape, it was fine. I wasn't interested in the rest though - citrus, mushy pineapple, and not particularly fresh looking apples. My bowl had only two grapes in it, and I really didn't want any of the other stuff. It was then that I noticed, in the very bottom of my bowl, one small piece of cantaloupe. My cantaloupe allergy is less severe, e.g. I shouldn't eat it, but it isn't terrifying to have in a fruit salad that I ate only two grapes out of anyway, so this was fine. I wished for berries. Meh to this fruit. *+.
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| Salade niçoise with hard boiled egg, |
And finally, the salad. I was confused when my tray was set in front of me, as, well, I was 1) expecting a salad with greens, and 2) expecting tuna. My confusion was clearly noted by the FA who served it, who said, "You wanted the salad?" I said yes, and she said, "oh, with tuna?" There wasn't even a tuna-less option on the menu, so of course I did? It turns out, they thought I was vegetarian because I had ordered the vegetarian starter, the vegetarian main, and asked about the cheese or vegetarian sandwich instead of the ham. Thus they had concluded I was a vegetarian, a fairly reasonable conclusion really. A portion of the tuna was quickly brought over in a side bowl.
Anyway, the salad still had no greens, and was definitely a play on niçoise, not really traditional. It ... had fava beans (or maybe they were broad beans? Lima beans?). Cubes of potato. Big hunks of red bell pepper. Black olives. Capers. Mealy cherry tomatoes. Two small pieces of hardboiled egg. Huge sprig of something to garnish. Very oily Italian-style dressing. Not really what I think of as niçoise at all really.
It was more like Italian succotash potato salad. The olives were particularly offensive, as they were the canned style black olives you get on pizza, and olives are kinda a critical part of a niçoise salad to get right! (And of course, pretty sure there was no anchovy in here either).
Lots of flavors, all somewhat strong and competing, and not really what I was looking for at that time of day. Eh. **.
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| Tuna Pastrami. |
Pastrami? Really this was just tuna, I guess with a spice rub? It looked decent, sushi grade tuna, but ... the texture was all strange. As if it had been frozen and thawed. An odd chewiness to it. The tuna also had no flavor itself, so at least not too fishy, but also tasteless, although the aggressive rub certainly made it flavorful overall.
Note to self: business class on a flight is not really the right time to get sushi grade raw fish. *.
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| Decaf Nespresso Lungo. |
I opted for decaf coffee with my meal, to attempt to give me a tiny jolt to stay awake many more hours, but not actually keep me up too longer. It really was lovely, I would have never known it was decaf. And to think, *most* airlines serve instant decaf. ****.
