Today I’m reviewing a pleasant flight with Helvetic Airways from Zurich to London City. We flew on one of their relatively new Embraer E190-E2s in Economy Class. This small regional airline is realtively unknown, but their service is pretty good. They are also a bit pricier than larger airlines. So please read my Helvetic Airways Economy review to find if they’re worth flying, and how they stack up to their larger brother, SWISS. Or watch my Youtube vid below:
Helvetic Airways
Helvetic Airways, not to be confused with the similarly named font, are a small Swiss regional airline based in Zurich. They are heavily integrated with Swiss and its German parent company Lufthansa Group (I booked this ticket throguh Swiss). Despite that they are actually independantly owned and not part of Lufthansa. So that technically makes them the “largest Swiss-owned airline“. Which isn’t saying much, Helvetic Airways only have 18 aircraft (all Embraer E Jets) in their fleet.
Helvetic’s main hub is at Zurich Airport with secondary hubs at Bern and Basel-Mulhouse. From their they fly to both business hubs (London, Amsterdam, Dusseldorf etc) and holiday destinations (Cyprus, Malta etc). Obviously my flight to London City is mostly geared towards business travellers. But I found the contrast interesting. I’m guessing many of these routes are operated on behalf of Swiss (like mine today).
Ticket and Route Details
The flight from London to Zurich is just over an hour long and is very well served with about 20 flights a day. Obviously there is Helvetic operating their Embraer E190 to London City Airport. Swiss also operate to both London City (with the Airbus A220-100) and London Heathrow (with the A320 which I reviewed here). British Airways also operate from those two airports. And lastly easyJet are the budget option and fly from London Gatwick.
I booked this flight as a return in standard economy from London to Zurich. The outboud flight was from London Heathrow whilst the return was to London City Airport.
As for extras, I only paid £15 for seat selection on the return flight. You can pay for extra baggage, upgrades to business and carbon offsetting but I didn’t as it was all very expensive. Specifically on upgrading, you can make a bid to upgrade to business class. The price starts at EUR 60 per person per flight and you can choose to bid more than EUR 400. If your bid is successful they’ll upgrade you and charge your card. So I just found it amusing that you can choose to place the maximum bid and it would cost EUR 800 (plus the ticket price already paid). At the time of booking, business would have only been about twice to price. So placing the max bid would be a crazy thing to do.
Zurich Airport
Zurich Airport, Switzerland’s busiest airport serving about 30 million passengers a year, is pretty good in my experience. And interestingly, the busiest route from Zurich is to London Heathrow, which I reviewed a few weeks ago. I had flown here from Istanbul with Turkish Airlines and was connecting on to London with Helvetic. And the connection experience was flawless. We had to transfer from the E gates to the D gates which involved hopping on a transit train. Despite that though it only took about 10 minutes from stepping off the previous flight to arriving at our new gate. That includes having to go through a security check. So overall one of the most efficient connections I’ve ever had.
It isn’t all good at Zurich Airport though. As I found when arriving the week before from London, the immigration queues can be terrible. The line stretched out of the immigration hall it was so long and took about 30 minutes. I had a similar experience the last time I was at Geneva too with a 45 minute immigration queue which makes me think Swiss immigration in general is very slow.
The terminal itself though is a very pleasant place to be with plenty of shops, restaurants and lounges. We didn’t have long before our flight though so just sat at the gate. Our flight boarded exactly on time. And thanks to how small the Embraer E190 E2 is it didn’t take long at all. So a very efficient operation and we ended up arriving at London City 15 minutes early.
The Plane & Seat
Today we were travelling on a 2.7 year old Embraer E190-E2 with callsign HB-AZG. The Embraer E190-E2 is a very modern plane, only entering service with airlines in 2018. It is an upgraded version of the also relatively modern Embraer E190, which entered service in 2004. My favourite thing about the Embraer E190 is the 2-2 seating configuration. When I travel it’s usually either solo or with my partner and I always choose a window seat. So only having 2 seats on each side of the aisle is just more comfortable.
The Helvetic Airways Economy seat was pretty good as far as European airlines go. Of course the plane is less than 3 years old so unsurprisingly everything felt very fresh and in good condition. The leather seats were also comfortable with adequate padding. Many airlines are using slimline seats these days to save space and increase legroom. The downside to that is that seats, especially leather ones, often feel like benches. This seat is a bit hard, but not as hard as the likes of Swiss and Lufthansa. Also, legroom is fantastic for a regional airline at 31-33″ of pitch according to SeatGuru.
They’ve also fitted 2 USB A ports per seat, though no power socket. And another thing I like about the Embraer E190 is how big the windows are. I couldn’t find any definitive dimensions but they are definitely bigger than most if not all modern airliners. I think the Boeing 787 may have slightly bigger windows but not by much. For someone that likes to look out the window, that’s good.
As you can see from the below picture, the cabin feels very Swiss. With red carpets, curtains and mood lighting it mirrors the red and white of the Swiss flag. You can also see that the seatbacks aren’t very high. If you’re tall then you’re unlikely to have much head support. This is mainly because the Embraer E190 just isn’t a very wide plane which also limits the ceiling height. So basically there’s just not enough space for a tall seat. Not really an issue on a regional airline. It would only matter if there did long haul flights, which they don’t.
Service and In-flight Experience
The Helvetic Airways Economy inflight experience is a bit lacklustre, consisting of just a small chocolate and a bottle of water. The chocolate was nice though and this is a very standard level of service in Europe. Especially on a flight that’s barely an hour long so I can’t really complain.
The inflight menu is exactly the same as that used on the larger Swiss. And it’s a pretty good menu. Surprisingly affordable too given how expensive Switzerland is in general. They even have a full burger and fries on the menu. I can’t comment on whether it tastes any good, but the picture looked nice at least.
Another highlight (okay, maybe not a highlight but good nonetheless) was the toilet. kept spotlessly clean and surprisingly big for how small this airliner is. It’s bigger than any Boeing 737 or Airbus A320 toilet. It even feels bigger than many long haul airliner toilets like on the Airbus A380 and Boeing 787.
Final Thoughts
Overall, Helvetic Airlines is a solid, if slightly basic airline. My experience today was efficient and apart from that there’s not really much to talk about. The new Embraer E190-E2 is a nice plane but not drastically different to the previous generation. Maybe a bit quieter but that’s about it. I do like the 2-2 seating configuration as there’s nothing worse than a middle seat. The Swiss chocolate served inflight is also great.
More from me…
Please feel free to check out other related posts I’ve written:
- Malaysia Airlines Economy A350-900 – Great food on a 13 hour flight
- No1 Lounge at London Gatwick South – Surprisingly good
- Singapore Airlines Economy from London to Singapore – As Good as People Say?
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