In Paise of Swiss Fly/Rail Convenience -- and a Caution

The ease of luggage-free intermodal travel in efficient Switzerland.

Swiss International Air Lines wins my heart with its Fly/Rail program. When you check for any SWISS flight, you can check your bags through to any Swiss railway or bus station or even have them delivered directly to your hotel. Having already flown from Denver to Los Angeles for my SWISS flight to Zurich, I was happy that I wouldn't need to deal with my big, heavy rolling duffle and my ski bag on two trains and one Post bus to Adelboden. In fact, I checked my luggage all the way through to my hotel. The cost was just $8 per bag.

Nothing like that exists in the US or elsewhere, but stay with me and imagine a ski trip to Aspen. Imagine flying to Denver, boarding a train directly in the terminal, changing trains say, in Eagle (that's not Amtrak's route, but we're imagining here) and then changing to a bus in Glenwood Springs for Aspen (we're still imagining, so we're pretending here's no airport in Aspen). Now, imagine that you haven't touched your luggage the entire way. And, then, when you're ready to go back home, you can have your bags picked up at your hotel or check them in at the bus station in Aspen, and you won't see them until you reach your final airport. Every connection will be seamless, because 10 minutes between trains or between the train and the bus in Switzerland is ample time.

The other thing that you need to imagine is that those bags won't get lost. I expected that when I arrived in the resort town of Adelboden at around 6:00 p.m., my bags would be on the same bus. They weren't, but since I was in Switzerland, I was confident that they weren't lost either. It's just helpful to know the system. It turns out that there is a cut-off time for the aircraft's arrival in Zurich (ZRH) or Geneva (GVA) in order for bags to make it to small mountain towns the same day. It turned out that in order for me and my bags to have arrived in Adelboden on the same bus, the SWISS flight would had to have landed before noon. We got later, so my bags were slated to arrive the next day -- and they did.

I enthusiastically recommend Fly/Rail, but if you use the service, check with tourist office of you destination to see what the cut-off time is if you need your things at your destination the same day that you arrive. I would not count on every counter agent at every SWISS gateway around the world to have this information at hand, which is the reason I suggest checking with the tourist office at your first destination.

If your flight's scheduled arrival time doesn't make the cut-off for that particular resort, take what you need in a carry-on -- being sure to put liquids and gels (no larger than 3 ounces) in a one-quart plastic zip bag, as the Transportation Security Agency's rules require.