At 15:45 on Tuesday, 2 October 2001, Swissair chairman and CEO Mario Corti stood in front of the cameras and announced that the airline would stop flying. By then, jets carrying the Swiss cross were already sitting on aprons from Zurich to New York, unable to leave, because fuel suppliers would no longer fill them without cash up front. The airline once nicknamed the "Flying Bank" had run out of money in plain sight.

Switzerland called it simply the Grounding. This Friday marks 25 years since that day, and the Verkehrshaus in Lucerne is marking the anniversary with a weekend of events. Here is how a national institution went from pride to paralysis in a matter of months.

The Flying Bank

Swissair was born on 26 March 1931 from the merger of Ad Astra Aero and Balair, led by aviation pioneer Walter Mittelholzer and Balz Zimmermann. Over the following decades it built a reputation for punctuality, service and financial solidity that earned it the nickname the "Flying Bank". For many Swiss, the red tail with the white cross was as much a national symbol as the banks and the watchmakers.

The Hunter Strategy

In the late 1990s the airline's parent, SAirGroup, pursued what became known as the Hunter Strategy: buying stakes in other airlines across Europe to build its own alliance. The expansion stretched the group's finances badly. The loss of Swissair Flight 111 off Nova Scotia in 1998 had already shaken the company, and the collapse in air travel after the attacks of 11 September 2001 hit an airline that no longer had reserves to absorb it.

The board was rebuilt in the crisis, leaving Mario Corti, formerly Chief Financial Officer at Nestlé, as the only remaining member. The credit ratings followed the money down. Moody's had cut SAirGroup from A3 to B1 by August 2001, and on 18 September downgraded it again, to B2. UBS refused to extend credit.

Phoenix, and the Morning the Money Stopped

On 1 October 2001 a rescue plan codenamed Phoenix was announced. At its heart, UBS and Credit Suisse would take over SAirGroup's stake in the regional carrier Crossair, which was to become the core of a new national airline. Suppliers read the plan as a signal that the old Swissair had no future. The next morning they began demanding payment in cash, and the fuel companies refused to fuel Swissair aircraft.

That afternoon Corti announced the cessation of flights. More than 230 flights were cancelled, and thousands of passengers and crew members were stranded around the world. Tickets became worthless. Banks froze crew accounts and some hotels threw out Swissair crews who could no longer guarantee their bills.

How Much Cash Was There?

The question of whether the Grounding was unavoidable has never gone away. A later investigation by Ernst & Young found that the group had more money on hand that morning than it had claimed:

The investigators said a further CHF 73 million was available on top of that, around CHF 123 million in all. Corti rejected the findings. The anger in the streets was aimed at the banks: protesters marched with banners reading "Bin Ospel", a play on UBS chairman Marcel Ospel's name, and "United Bandits of Switzerland".

Cash in the Flight Bag

Flights resumed on 5 October, supported by a federal emergency loan of more than CHF 450 million. For a while, Swissair crews carried cash with them so they could buy fuel abroad, an extraordinary sight for an airline that had once been a byword for financial stability.

The reprieve was temporary. Swissair ceased operations on 31 March 2002. Its last flight, from São Paulo, landed in Zurich on 1 April 2002, the day Crossair took on its new identity as Swiss International Air Lines. Swissair had flown for 71 years. Lufthansa took over SWISS in 2005, and the liquidation of SAirGroup was completed only in 2024.

Grounding, 25 Years On

The story became a feature film, Grounding: Die letzten Tage der Swissair. The Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne will screen it during its Air & Space Days from 2 to 4 October 2026, alongside a panel discussion with former Swissair employees, a talk by Swiss astronaut Claude Nicollier, a Super Puma Display Team demonstration and a cabinet exhibition on Swissair.

A quarter of a century later, the Grounding remains the moment Switzerland learned that even its Flying Bank could run dry. The aircraft were sound, the crews were ready, and the airline still could not buy a tank of fuel.

Sources: Wikipedia, Swissair; aeroTELEGRAPH (28 September 2026); SRF Archiv; C-Films AG; ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Bildarchiv