Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
close to centre, clean, well signed |
| Disadvantages: |
currently undergoing building work - thus some walkways are not working . |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
Zurich, famous home of the gnomes is the hub from which most Swissair flights leave, and is generally most crowded just before and after business hours, with the jet-set taking off and landing here. I flew through Zurich twice in the last week, arriving first time round at 11am and then the second time round at 7pm.
On both occasions I found that the airport was very clean, which was no surprise, since the Swiss are renowned for their tidiness. The airport is currently undergoing major expansion, which did mean that moving walkways were not working (they were still being finished) and so you had to go by foot between one terminal and another. This is however not too much of a hardship and the airport was very well signed, with signs in English.
As a non EU state,
Switzerland still has the Tax and Duty Free shopping facilities that are not open to people within the EU. The shops are clean, although of course being in Switzerland there are no Euro pricings unlike other airports. There are a range of coffee shops and cafés to get a quick bite to eat.
Not being there for very long (connections usually in around 1 hour) I did not have an opportunity to sample their delights. There aer also shops at the gate (selling chocolate etc... how very swiss). The toilets and washrooms were clean and tidy, there was no graffiti on cubicle walls, and generally the atmosphere was present. Whilst there are still some smoking areas at the gates, there is a lot more non-smoking space than at some other airports.
The only gripe I had was with the security check, with an over-zealous person who pushed my through it before I even had a chance to remove my mobile phone, my palmtop, keys etc. Other than that the staff at the airport were very polite, and spoke English if necessary, although I spoke German or French with them.
If you need to be contacted, then mobile phone reception is very good at the airport, with all three Swiss networks (DiAx, Swiss GSM and Orange) giving good signals throughout the airport. The airport is also only twenty minutes from the city centre which is a vast improvement on some of the places I have flown to and from, and there are various reliable services to get you into the city centre. The airport will be even better when the extension is completed.
