Friday 27.12.2002, CET 05:14



Wings bar revives spirit of Swissair




Landing for a drink at Wings (Wings)
Pilot Marc Schr�der’s dream to keep a part of the tradition and spirit of the collapsed airline Swissair alive has taken off in the centre of Zurich.

With a small crew of former Swissair staff, Schr�der has opened a bar with the feel of a airliner but a lot more atmosphere.






And Wings Airline Bar and Lounge has a prime location – it’s on the ground floor of the building that houses the city’s renowned Saffran Guild.

It’s run mainly be people who worked for Swissair or now the company’s successor “Swiss”. They include not only flight attendants and ground staff but also a handful of pilots.

No check-in, no passport

With the windows of the long-haul MD 11 fixed to the walls, the ambiance of the airline world is unmistakable. Aircraft trolleys and other Swissair memorabilia add to the attraction of the bar, in which you don’t have to check in, show your passport or queue up at the gate.

The idea came to Schr�der last year after the news at a union meeting one evening that 300 Swissair pilots were to lose their jobs.

“This was a really sad evening and the next morning, I had the idea to do something constructive, something good in all these times of bad news,” he told swissinfo.

“So I put in our Internet forum a message saying that if we could not build our own airline, let’s build at least our own airline bar.”


More at:

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/Swissinfo.html?siteSect=161&sid=1482649

Kind of like us here in the U.S. having a bar that has windows from a Pinto.