Demand for premium travel has been on the rise since the end of the pandemic. Although corporate travel still isn’t where it used to be, premium cabins continue to fly full. In most cases with leisure travellers willing to spend a bit more cash to travel more comfortably. This has been a good growing environment for airlines such as La Compagnie and newly launched Beond Airlines. The latter of these carriers is at the center of this post. Beond Airlines is in fact ready to launch direct non-stop flights from Zurich to Dubai.
About Beond Airlines Flights From Zurich to Dubai
Beond Airlines is ready to start offering direct and non-stop flights between Dubai and Zurich. Two extremely wealthy cities and financial powerhouses of their respective regions. Zurich is also one of Europe’s major aviation hubs although situated in the small landlocked country of Switzerland.
Therefore it makes quite a lot of sense for a luxury focused carrier such a Beond to fly this route. The route is quite a special one as it is a fifth freedom flight. Beond is a Maldivian airline and therefore had to seek authorisation in order to operate this service.
Another peculiarity of this flight is that Beond is one of the few passenger airlines to currently operate its flights from Dubai’s Al-Maktoum World Central Airport. The airport is destined to become one of, if not the, world’s largest aviation hubs. However at the moment only a handful of airlines fly from and to this airport.
All of that aside we should now look at the details of this new service that Beond Airlines is ready to launch. Flights will start operating on the route on May 14th 2024 with 2 weekly frequencies every:
- Tuesday
- Friday
As for the schedule of the flight, here’s how it’ll work:
Numero Volo | Aeroporto Partenza | Codice Aeroporto | Orario Partenza | Aeroporto Arrivo | Codice Aeroporto | Orario Arrivo | Giorno | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() | B4 090 | Dubai | DWC | 02:00 | Zurich | ZRH | 07:00 | Tuesday |
![]() | B4 090 | Dubai | DWC | 15:50 | Zurich | ZRH | 20:50 | Friday |
![]() | B4 091 | Zurich | ZRH | 16:30 | Dubai | DWC | 00:35+1 | Tuesday |
![]() | B4 091 | Zurich | ZRH | 21:50 | Dubai | DWC | 05:55 | Friday |
What Does Beond Offer Passengers?
Beond is quite a recent entry in the civil aviation market. Similarly to what French carrier La Compagnie does, Beond’s business model rotates around giving a premium cabin only experience on narrow body planes. At the moment they operate a single aircraft, an A319, with another soon to join, an A321.
Contrary to what you might think the airline doesn’t own neo versions of the Airbus planes it operates. On the contrary they are all of the older ceo generation. Both these planes are setup with a business class only layout, featuring 4 seats abreast in a 2-2 layout.
The luxury experience is designed to start before boarding with chauffeur service and many other small touches that should make the experience quite exclusive. The only issue? the fact that they currently operate from DWC airport in Dubai. While it’ll be a very luxurious airport when completed it surely isn’t at the moment and is quite a bit of road from anything.
A Small But Growing Network
Beond is still a very small operation. Only time will tell if they will be able to make their business strategy turn profits. The airline as mentioned is based in Male in the Maldives and therefore focuses on intercepting incoming passengers to the small but beautiful island state. Currently, including the Zurich Dubai service, Beond Airlines opeates 3 routes:
- Dubai-Zurich
- Dubai-Male
- Riyadh-Male
Probably with the arrival of the new addition to the fleet we’ll see some more flights being announced. It isn’t though an easy business model to work on, as expectations are very high. Passengers will expect something of a similar level to what they have come to expect on middle eastern carriers when flying on these routes. I wish the little airline all the luck possible, but it won’t be easy to make this business viable.