I donīt understand why some people try to hold the 2 pilot corps entirely responsible for the succes or failure of the whole company.
Sure, itīs important to have a stable and motivated workforce, but letīs not exagerate our role as pilots.
Most passengers (especially foreign pax) have absolutely
NO idea about the labour dispute within Swiss, and even the Swiss passengers know very little about it. The only thing they read and hear in the media is that André Dosé is named
Entrepreneur of the Year 2002 
and that all is going perfectly according to the
famous business plan. All that passengers want is to get safely and comfortably from A to B for a reasonable price and have access to a large (where is the alliance Mr Dosé ?
) network with a good frequent flyer program.
The
passengers pay our salaries and are the final judges about our product. So if the product is not very good (lotīs of complaints about inflight service and NO membership of an international alliance), connections are missed (ZRH is not a suitable airport for a hub: noise regulations + intersecting runways
) and the home market is small (Switzerland, need I say more), then an airline will lose customers and fail to make money. As pilots there is very little we can do about that. Simple as that !