Switzerland's national airline, Swiss, is to drop the air link between the country's financial center Zurich and the US capital Washington.

Swiss will no longer operate flights to Washington DC when its winter timetable comes into effect on October 26.

The financially struggling carrier said that, despite its best efforts, it had not been able to find a partner for the Zurich-Washington route.

More at:

http://news.airwise.com/stories/2003/09/1063970623.html

Today trading on swiss stock was suspended:

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/Swissinfo.html?siteSect=161&sid=4265427

Probably will be joining an alliance. File that under, 'who cares?'

http://www.businessworld.ie/livenews.htm?a=765466;s=rollingnews.htm

They've joined OneWorld. Looks like a couple of us will be adding a few more airlines to the list we won't fly. I do fly Delta despite the fact we booked the flight to Switzerland through them because they dropped swissair soon after the crash. A few other family members I've spoken to will be doing the same thing.

Check out what Lufthansa has to say about swiss air:

Lufthansa said Tuesday a close connection with Swiss wouldn't have made sense, according to German news agency VWD. "We aren't financial adventurers," VWD reported Lufthansa as saying.

One analyst, who declined to be named, said it's hard to see what Swiss brings to the oneworld alliance geographically, which is probably the reason it's selling BA some Heathrow slots.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/dowjones/20030923/bs_dowjones/200309230630000666

The Swiss press is apparently skeptical of the swiss airline move towards joining an alliance because they claim it still leaves the airline open to financial problems:

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/Swissinfo.html?siteSect=111&sid=4273662