April 03, 2004

(Swiss) chocs away in my beautiful balloon
Ian Belcher boards an airship for a taste of the high life at 35mph

UNLESS my pilot has taken a dramatically wrong turn I am still passing over central Switzerland — not the South Pacific. But it is hard to tell from the water 1,000ft (305m) below. Lake Vierwaldstättersee’s glacial deposits produce explosions of turquoise and aquamarine worthy of Tahiti’s tropical shallows. It is a mesmerising if unexpected sight.  

But this is no ordinary viewpoint. I am inside a cabin attached to a slow moving 200ft-long torpedo of gas. Passenger airships, a throwback to a more romantic era of travel, have taken gracefully to the air once again at Buochs near Lucerne.

Since last May, the small Swiss town’s ex-military airfield has been one of two places in the world — along with Friedrichshafen in Germany — where you can take a trip in an airship. All you need is a Panama hat and label-splattered leather suitcase for the full 1930s experience.

Well, with a few modern twists. Our craft is a £5 million Skyship 600 powered by two Porsche 255 HP turbo engines, usually found in 911 SL sports cars. It is also, nervous flyers take note, filled with helium rather than the hydrogen used in the ill-fated Hindenburg, which exploded in 1937.

On arrival I make a glaring faux pas: I call the Skyship a Zeppelin. To aficionados, that is similar to calling a Kiwi an Aussie. While our airship’s envelope relies on gas pressure for its aerodynamic shape, the heavier Zeppelin has an internal frame.

Basic misconceptions corrected, I check in at a tented airport terminal and receive a boarding pass and safety lecture. After that, events bear no similarity to a plane flight. For starters, there is the take-off. Once the Skyship is released from its tether, nose into the wind, it rises almost straight up. There is none of the thrust of an ascending jet. Just a gentle lift to around 1,000ft.

At that altitude, the legal minimum for passing over congested areas, we undo safety belts and can walk around the 12-man cabin that opens on to the flight deck. It isn’t difficult. The airship travels incredibly smoothly without the slightest tremor: more top-of-the-range Mercedes than revving Ferrari.

“You just don’t get sudden, jerky turbulence,” says the British pilot, Peter Buckley, who has been flying airships since 1975. “It’s like rolling smoothly over waves of air.”

We are also allowed to slide back the windows, something I’ve not recently done on a 747, at least not when the stewardess was watching. While not a massively wide opening, it still gives a unique fresh-air perspective. It helps that we are travelling at only 35mph in an unpressurised cabin and so won’t get sucked out — an experience that tends to blur the holiday photographs.

We pass around the Bürgenstock, a giant finger of rock jutting out into Lake Vierwaldstättersee, with exclusive resort hotels lined along its wooded ridge like white matchboxes. We cruise on, passing over Lucerne, looking down on the palatial lakeside hotels and sparkling lido, along with a mass of boats anchored on the vibrantly coloured water.

“As an airline pilot I did more than 11,000 hours, but this is real flying,” says Christian Schulthess, CEO of Skycruise Switzerland, which operates the service. “You can open the windows and feel the wind on your face. Everyone looks up, sometimes they wave. It’s flying as it used to be.”

I don’t spot anyone waving. But two fellow passengers, Hildegard and Werner Brunner from nearby Littau, who are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary, happily act as tour guides. They point out vineyards, small towns like Weggis and Kassnacht, and nearby peaks such as the Rigi, Titlis and Pilatus. “It’s wunderbar,” says Hildegard. “It’s nice to spy on the neighbours!” Skycruise offers up to eight flights a day from Wednesday to Sunday, from 40-minute round trips to a two-hour sunset cruise to Zurich on which champagne is served. At £474 that is a pricey treat, but you travel over simply epic scenery: a succession of lakes, including the Zugersee and Zürichsee, against a backdrop of the snow-licked high Alps.

Buckley, who has piloted airships in the States, Europe and the Dominican Republic, believes it is the most beautiful area in which he has worked. “It’s constantly unfolding,” he says. “You turn a corner and there’s another lake. It’s like going through a series of rooms, each with a different view.”

It is certainly a different view as we approach landing. The Skyship’s looming shadow gradually grows on the ground. In contrast to the calm on-board atmosphere, there is frenetic activity below as the ground crew grab the mooring ropes and strain to manoeuvre it for tethering. It is like taming a huge beast.

The flights have attracted many foreign tourists, including Indians who wanted to see the Alpine landscape popularised in Bollywood movies. However today’s passengers — some of the 3,247 who flew over the summer — are mainly Swiss and German. Numbers may rise in future as Schulthess plans to double the cabin’s capacity by 2005 and the Skycruise Switzerland boss also hopes to develop the business abroad.

For example, Athens will host the airship during the Olympics this summer, and there are plans for a second airship providing passenger flights over Berlin; in the future you may even see the Skyship taking off from London’s Docklands. Says Schulthess: “Flying into Heathrow, there are fantastic sights along the Thames.” At least that is one stretch of water that will never be confused with the South Pacific.

Additional reporting by Mecky Fögeling

NEED TO KNOW

Getting there: Ian Belcher travelled with Rail Europe (0870 5848848, www.raileurope.co.uk), which offers return fares from £137. Skycruise Switzerland (00 41 52354 5974, www.skycruise.ch). Flights cost £174-£474, according to length of journey. The shortest is 40 minutes, the longest of two hours, with champagne included. Children under four cannot fly. Flights run from June 11-July 25, then from September 15-October 24.

Where to stay: The elegant Art Nouveau Palace Hotel in Lucerne (00 41 41416 1616, www.palace-luzern.ch)  offers two-night packages from £297pp, including breakfast and dinner. The Park Hotel in the spectacular Bürgenstock resort (00 41 41612 9010, www.buergenstock-hotels.ch) has doubles from £219 a night.