An Expression of Sadness
Let me state right at the beginning that I’m only a wannabe and I do not financially, nor professionally depend on Swissair, but you can’t imagine how emotionally affected I am. And I think I speak for a big part of the Swiss people ,the Swiss aviators and especially the wannabes.
Since 70 years Swissair has been a symbol of our national pride. It has been a symbol of safety, punctuality and good service. And last but not least it carried our flag on the tail around the world, marked our presence in the world and showed that the best airline comes from Switzerland. It has always been the deram of every little boy to become a pilot and in Switzerland that meant automatically a Swissair pilot. My father applied at Swissair in the early 60ies. He was rejected, but still, as aviator he remained a Swissair fan. When I was a little boy I often went to ZRH with him to see the planes. And I always said: “I’m gonna be a Swissair Jumbo captain”. Ten, eleven or twelve years ago as schoolboys, our class could visit the former SLS (means approx. Swiss Aviation School). From then I knew that I’ll choose the profession of pilot. I think at this time Swissair was relesed into the free market. During this ten years we heard some bad and worse news. But we always said: “forget it, Swissair is a good enterprise”. We simply couldn’t imagine that this enterprise can run out of money. Then we saw how lower middle class airlines joined the Qualiflyer Group and how the best airline besides Swissair (Austrian) jumped off. But we just said: “don’t worry, Swissair is a good enterprise, it can’t run out of money”. Then Bruggisser was fired and the whole disorder came to the daylight. Slowly we began to realize that Swissair is in troubles. "But OK, every company gets once in troubles, Swissair will manage this. And if they were in serious trobles the government would help them, because this is a national interest". And then in the last days we realized that there are serious problems of cash. But we thought: “ The banks will give credits and if not the govt will help”. But nobody helped and now Swissair is bankrupt. Impossible,.....incerdible...... Ervery government would have helped its national carrier, but ours didn’t....... It’s just incredible...... OK, Swissair was in the free market but somehow it was still a state enterprise, people identified with Swissair, it was just something really Swiss. I can’t believe yet the news of today....... Nobody thought that it would happen so fast and that it would be so surprising...... Maybe we didn’t want it to see, maybe we were all blinded of our national symbol and didn’t ask ourselfs wether the strategy of the past 10 years was right........
I’m not so concerned about finding a pilot job maybe I’ll stay a wannabe a bit longer, I do not really worry about that. But still I’m very, very sad that Swissair stopped to exist, because I think it is or was the aim or dream of every Swiss aviator to become a Swissar captain. And I’m very, very sorry for all those fellow pilots and ground staff fellows, who will lose their jobs. Good luck to all of you!
So, I’m done, wanna get rid of my frustration. Comments and reactions are not expected but still welcome.
380
Good bye Swissair
