Swiss A220 Economy Class Review Zurich (ZRH) to Dresden (DRS)

Swiss operates a number of 'regional' flights with their new fleet of A220s. Since I had never been on an A220 I was thoroughly excited to try it.

Swiss has a dark history of many crashes of flights from Zurich to Dresden and Leipzig in the later 1990s and early 2000s. Three crashes within a short period that killed everyone on board the commuter planes - with a mix of pilot error and pilot confusion usually to blame for it.





As you would expect boarding started on the minute shown on my boarding pass. I was amazed by how big the crowd seemed and a B737 would have been a plane I'd expect for the passengers to line up.

The A220 looks just like the A320 little brother though it is made by Bombardier that was an independent company for most of the development of the A220 (that name came later). However does not feel like an older Embraer or Bombardier plane - I can walk into the plane upright and there are huge overhead bins hat swallow up big bags. Indeed in the configuration that Swiss chose it feels spacious - in seat pitch and in cabin height.







The weather was atrocious, it was dark, windy and there was heavy rain. Luckily visibility wasn't that bad. However, Zurich airport seems to not be worried about that (or Swiss air pilots). Summer seems a different story.



We took off right into the stormy winds and the engines seemed to have plenty of spare power. The ride was also quiet and comfortable. Despite the bad weather, there was almost no turbulence.

We landed into another windy airport with yet another 'drop landing' that got us on the ground safely and quickly.

In sum - I feel Airbus (and more Bombardier) have cracked the problem of passenger (dis)comfort on smaller planes and the need of airlines to have smaller planes to serve some destinations efficiently. I really liked the spacious cabin and quiet ride. Everything else about this flight seemed as routine as it could be.