Direct flights to the Swiss city of Zurich are to be reintroduced from Bristol Airport next February as it continues to recover from the impact of the pandemic.
The weekly service, which will be operated by flag carrier Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS), will be the third to the country from Bristol. 
EasyJet, the airport’s largest airline, flies to Geneva and Basle.
SWISS said it expected the new service, its first from Bristol, to be popular with winter sports enthusiasts. Zurich, pictured, is close to the popular ski resorts of Arosa-Lenzerheide and Andermatt.
The city itself is a major cultural centre and home to more than 50 museums, 100-plus art galleries as well as a lively and diverse nightlife.
The flights, which begin on February 4, replace a short-lived, thrice-weekly service between Bristol and Zurich launched by Swiss airline Helvetic in 2011.
That service used 109-seater Fokker 100 aircraft. SWISS will operate one of its100 to150-seater Airbus A220s, pictured, on the service or one of the 97 to 144 seater Embraer E190s it has on short-term lease from Helvetic.
The flights will depart Bristol at midday every Saturday, arriving in Zurich at 1pm. The return flight will leave Zurich at 1:45pm, reaching Bristol at 4:35pm. 
Passengers using the service will also be able to connect with SWISS flights to 83 other destinations from Zurich.
Bristol Airport commercial director Rupert Lawrie, pictured below, said: “We are delighted with the announcement of SWISS offering customers their first ever direct service between Zurich and Bristol commencing February 2023.
“This is a major milestone in our business recovery in welcoming a new scheduled airline to Bristol Airport and shows consumer confidence is returning after the Covid impact the aviation industry has suffered in recent years.
“We look forward to working with SWISS and developing this important route in the future.”
SWISS announced the Bristol-Zurich route as part of its new winter 22/23 timetable. 
The airline’s chief commercial officer Tamur Goudarzi Pour said: “Given this summer’s difficult operating situation throughout Europe’s air transport sector, we are focusing on further stabilising our SWISS services in the coming winter schedules.
“In doing so, we’ll be offering our customers a range of flights that’s actually more extensive than it was before the pandemic.
“In Europe in particular we’re providing an attractive choice of destinations for the colder season. At the same time, though, we’ve been conservative in our planning and have reduced our flight programme by a number of frequencies, to ensure that we can keep our schedules as stable as possible.”
Meanwhile, the UK’s third largest airline Jet2, which started operating from Bristol last summer, said take-up of the service had been “hugely encouraging”.
Bristol is the company’s 10th base. The company, which also operates the Jet2holidays brand, expanded to the airport as part of its long-term ambition to be “the UK’s leading and best leisure travel business”.
It said: “The enthusiastic feedback we have received from our new Bristol customers for our customer-centric leisure travel product offering has been hugely encouraging, and we look forward to continuing to grow in the South West of the UK.”
Jet2 originally started more than 30 years ago as the commercial aircraft company Channel Express and made its first leisure flight under the Jet2.com brand from Leeds Bradford Airport to Amsterdam in 2003.
It has based three 189-seat Boeing 737-800 aircraft at Bristol Airport, flying to more than 30 destinations, including family holiday hotspots and short-break favourites such as Palma, Ibiza, Faro and Lanzarote. Many of its route were previously operated from Bristol by Thomas Cook, which collapsed in 2019.
