Lying to the Maldives: That’s how extravagant the new luxury airline from Zurich is

The offer is evolving: a new airline bans economy class passengers from the cabin and only offers luxury chairs for flights to the Maldives. The show starts tentatively in November from Zurich.

The first plane took off on November 17: from Zurich heading to the Maldives on an Airbus A319. There is usually room for more than 120 passengers on board. But with the new airline Beyond, there are only 44 seats. The reason: The airline relies on an expensive offer and only offers business class seats.

Beyond is confident that it is not an ordinary airline, but rather a “lifestyle brand with luxury aircraft” and hopes to attract wealthy customers. The math: Anyone who can afford a holiday to the Maldives anyway would be willing to pay more for a flight with “the world’s first premium leisure airline”.

Luxury airlines have big goals

What happens to your money? First: space. According to the airline, all seats can be extended to form a flat bed. This means that it can be tolerated that the converted Airbus does not make the flight to Male and instead has to stop to refuel in Dubai.

Food and drinks are served to solvent customers in cups and on porcelain. There should be no plastic dishes on board. During the presentation of the luxury route, CEO Tero Tascilla emphasized that Beyond does not just offer a business class, but rather a “leisure” experience.

To begin with, Beond serves not only the largest Swiss airport, but also airports in Munich and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Other airports are scheduled to follow in the next five years: European Airport Basel is also on the list, the HandelZeitung learns. 32 aircraft will then transport passengers to the Maldives from 52 airports.

Even if all passengers are traveling business class, there are also differences in ticket prices on Beyond. The three booking categories are called Delight, Bliss and Opulence and differ in terms of service, for example limousine airport transfer and free baggage allowance.

So far there has been little demand for supply

A sample from the Handel Zeitung found that a return trip for the travel period at the end of November should cost between 1,600 and 2,100 francs. It was not possible to verify this information: the booking tool on the Beyond website was not working at the time of publishing this text. For comparison: a non-stop flight with Edelweiss costs 980 francs at the same time, while Turkish Airlines charges only 620 francs with a stop in Istanbul. Of course in economics.

Local tour operators are booked to launch the luxury airline. DER Touristik Suisse says they are in discussions about a possible collaboration. Currently, customers heading to the Maldives are booking with existing airlines, the Handel Zeitung newspaper quoted a company spokesperson as saying.

Migros subsidiary Hotelplan has not yet noticed any “large waves of bookings”. TUI Suisse and Globetrotter Group have not yet received any bookings.