EuropeBoard

Swan Air, often shortened to SWA is a Rivierenlander airline holding company with its registered office and operational headquaters in Lelystad, Rivierenland. It was formed in March 1988 after the Rivierenlander flag carrier before Swan Air (Koninklijke Rivierenlandse Luchtdienst) had folded in the 70's as measurement against recession. Swan Air was founded as a replacement and is state-owned. It's subsidiaries are private-owned (except for Swan Cargo). Swan Air is mostly active in Europe and it flies mostly to London, Berlin, Rome and Vulkanerborg. Swan Air is also a member of the Star Alliance

History

---

Koninklijke Rivierenlandse Luchtdienst
Swan Air's predecessor was founded in 1919, which would've made it the oldest airline operating by it's founding name if it was still operating today. KRL was founded as an attempt to cut short the time of travel between cities in Rivierenland. The first flight was between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, operated by a Junkers F-13. The first passengers of that flight included a few journalists, King Julian I and Prime Minister De Jong. After that, the government began to invest more in the airline as they tried to fly abroad. The first flight abroad was from Amsterdam to London. This flight was operated in 1923 operated by a Fokker F VII and was occupied by a few journalists, a few Brits, King Julian I and Prime Minister Wilson.

KRL was a benchmark of an airline and was always one of the first airlines when it ordered a new plane. KRL's goal was to fly to every continent, but mostly to it's dominions in West Africa and South America. This meant that KRL had to make layovers in several other countries. Eventually, KRL succeeded in opening a route to Conakry, but failed in opening a route to Fortaleza. This meant that Fortaleza and Recife would receive a subsidiary to fly only there and in other places in the Americas, while KRL's route from Amsterdam to Conakry consisted of stops in Paris, Toulouse, Madrid, Malaga, Marrakesh, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Nouakchott, Dakar, Bissau and eventually Conakry. This route was KRL's most lucrative long haul route.

World War II and after

For a while, KRL was one of Europe's most lucrative airlines and was flying to a lot of places that weren't in the Americas. This started to change, as in 1934 all routes to Austro-Bavaria and to Germany were shut down after their regime changes. They were the first airline to do that and as a result the most affected airline by those shutdown routes. KRL had reported losses for the first time in it's history and the government became concerned. The situation then steadied but then was thrown out of stability when WWII started.

After Rivierenland was successfully invaded, KRL started gaining heavy losses and became a burden on the national budget, so Prime Minister Kießling forced KRL's CEO at the time to dispose of 90% of it's aircraft and close all routes except for the route between Cardiff and Vigo. This proved risky, but it was successful and that one remaining route was set in place as to transport people to the neutral Portugalicia. Although a success and barely keeping the airline afloat, the route was many times undermined by Axis forces and on three separate occasions there were shootdowns of KRL aircraft on that route.

After the war had ended, KRL was set back in Rivierenland again and updated it's fleet and destinations, which included things like routes to Palermo, Billund, Lisbon, etc. as well as getting the newest Constellations and opening routes to places like New York and Tokyo. Soon after, KRL entered the jet age by acquiring two De Havilland Comets. They were used between Amsterdam and Frankfurt to places like Algiers, Cairo, Belgrade, Istanbul, Teheran, Vulkanerborg and even as far as St. Johns in Newfoundland and Labrador.

As time progressed, KRL became more and more important to Rivierenland as they started to influence international travel more. KRL acquired more of the latest planes, like the Boeing 707. KRL started to fly to many more places, which also meant the end of KRL's subsidiary in Fortaleza and Recife as Flights from Amsterdam and Frankfurt to Fortaleza and Recife began to spring up after the purchase of the 707's. Furthermore, the government plane was then also operated by KRL, which meant that a passenger jet was converted to the new government plane but was still operated by KRL. KRL became the face of Rivierenland and was at one point the most powerful company in the country.

Recession and dissolvence
In the late 60's, KRL was a benchmark airline and was considered one of the best in the world, only competing with BOAC and some American airlines. KRL was at it's peak but it all started to go downhill from there. KRl began to run some losses, so the company executives made a decision which made sense on paper but backfired immediately. They decided to replace their older Connies with DC-10's and Boeing 747's. This worked in the short-term, but in 1970 this began to backfire immediately as losses began to rise and the public wasn't pleased with KRL as they used to before.

In the early 70's, the government decided to invest more in domestic railroads and highways so that people wouldn't have to fly if they wanted to go from (lets say for example) Amsterdam to Zürich. This caused more losses for KRL who had just began to steady financially and soon the airline was forced to scrap some slots for domestic flights and sold some of it's routes to airlines like Transavia, Martinair and Edelweiss. This steadied the ship for a while.

In 1973, the oil crisis hit Rivierenland hard and a recession begun. KRL had been hit the hardest out of all companies within Rivierenland and began to see red financially more than they could handle. In response to this, KRL stopped flying routes that weren't deemed profitable enough, like the routes to Conakry, Fortaleza and Recife just to name a few. This didn't work and KRL eventually sold it's Atlantic and Asian routes to Martinair, which confined KRL to Europe and Africa. In 1975, Prime Minister Sporar had made another one of his ineffective measures against the crisis and decided to pull the plug on KRL and forced the airline to dissolve. From that day, Martinair became the new flag carrier.

Government intervention and the founding of Swan Air
For over a decade, Martinair was the airline that connected Rivierenland with the rest of the world. It did a respectable job, but the government wanted to strip away Martinair's status as flag carrier because Martinair was private-owned, which wasn't very liked by the government. Prime Minister Popescu then drafted up a team of people to start up a new airline and in 1988, Swan AIr was founded with it's main hubs in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Bremen and Zürich. The government then stripped away Martinair's status and bought some planes and routes for Swan Air. This was seen as a hasty decision, but it paid off, despite it almost bankrupting Swan Air.

Swan Air was basically told to run, while it couldn't even walk yet, but since the general public didn't like Martinair so much, they started flying Swan Air and Swan Air was saved from early financial downfall. Swan Air's main route was to Vulkanerborg, but everyone involved with the airline claimed that their main route was to London. Whatever the main route was, SWA was making profits and soon began expanding further.

In the early 90's, SWA made an attempt to win back domestic flights by setting up a subsidiary which was called Swan Regional. This proved unprofitable and in 1994 Swan Regional was split between Transavia and Edelweiss. SWA also attempted to create a cargo division and they succeeded with that. SWA then began investing in European routes and as a result they bought a load of Airbus A300's and Saab 340's. by 1997, Swan Air connected Rivierenland with every nation in Europe, with the last European country to set up a route by Swan Air being Ukraine, because of some administration issues.

In the early 2000's, Swan Air entered the Star Alliance, which boosted the airline and gave it more power. Swan Air began investing in TV ads, A330's and Swan Air even made attempts at buying up Transavia and Edelweiss to make them their subsidiaries. Edelweiss and Transavia were acquired and the deal was done at the worst possible moment: 9/11. Because of 9/11, many airlines, including Swan Air began to see less passengers and less profits, which was definitely bad for Swan Air as they had just spent an enormous amount on the acquisition. Swan Air still survived, but stopped it's expansion for a while.

Since 2010, Swan Air has been expanding again and has started routes to Australia, Southern Africa, the Far East and Some parts of Latin America. Over the past few years, Swan Air received good reviews, a 4-star rating on SkyTrax, enlarged their social media presence and since 2017, Swan Air fuels it's planes with biofuel in order to reduce emissions and for every cubic litre of CO2 they emit, the airline pays 1 Guilder in compensation.

Corporate affairs and identity

---

Management
Between 1988 and 1996, the government was responsible for corporate affairs in Swan Air. The government began to have their hands more and more full with the airline and decided to let someone else become CEO and Chairman. The government drafted in two people from the higher ranks of the airline's hierarchy and appointed Thomas Gudjohnsen as CEO and Eidur Johansson as Chairman. Gudjohnsen didn't want the job and left the airline in 1998 and was replaced by Barbara Brooks. In 1998, the airline also set up a board of directors, so that management would become easier. They supervise the rest of the company, but the board of directors the CEO and the Chairman are all supervised by the Parliament, since there's no ministry of transportation.

Head Office

Swan Air's office is located in Lelystad, near Lelystad Airport. The current headquarters were built between 1978 and 1982 and were first used by a bicycle company until they moved out in 1987 and move to Harderwijk. The building was empty for a year until the airline moved in.

Subsidiaries
Companies in which Swan AIr holds a stake includes:

Company	Type	Principal activities	Stake in %
Transavia	Subsidiary	Airline	100%
Edelweiss	Subsidiary	Airline	100%
Swan Cargo	Subsidiary	Cargo airline	100%
Martinair	Joint venture	Cargo airline	60%
KRS International	Joint venture	Rail operator	30%
Arriva	Major shareholder	Bus operator	15%

Branding
The logo of the KRL was a very simple one. It was the airline's name with a crown above it to show that it had royal status. The logo looked a lot like a bird and KRL was nicknamed "The Rivierenlander Bird". The logo stayed the same until 1958, when an American designing firm changed KRL's logo by replacing the crown with the royal swan and Tulip and changing the font of the letters. The design wasn't very good and in 1961, KRL acquired it's final logo, which was the old font, but only with the royal swan. Swan Air at it's founding was only accompanied with the logo that was basically the airline's name in a very basic font and no caps. In 1991, the royal swan was added and some letters were capitalized. The current logo was adopted in 1994, when the colour of the logo was changed from white to black.

Liveries
KRL's original livery was just bare metal with the airline's letters on the side. This remained the case until 1946, when a new livery was introduced which featured three stripes on the sides of the plane in the colours of the flag. This remained until 1951, when 2 extra stripes were added to create a stretched version of the flag on the plane. This remained until 1970, when the livery changed to white with a thick black stripe on the sides of the plane. When Swan Air was founded, the planes originally flew in an all white livery with only the company's name written on the side. This stayed that way until 2004, when The planes were painted all red. Since Air Greenland had this exact same livery, Swan Air changed the livery slightly by painting the tail dark blue and adding in a white swan on the tail.

Social media and sponsorship
Swan Air is very much present on social media, with them having a Twitter account, an Instagram account, a Facebook account, etc. They also have their own YouTube channel and they sponsor many Youtubers as well. This all started in 2006, when Swan Air joined YouTube and created their own website. Later on they also joined Hyves and MySpace, but then quickly left for Facebook and Twitter. As of March 2020, their YouTube channel has 14 million subscribers and have thousands of followers on other social media sites.

Swan Air is also a relatively large sponsor of many things. Mostly of sports teams, but also sponsor of TV shows and and several events. In the past, Swan Air has (co-)sponsored several events like Sail, Eurovision, AutoRAI, Legoworld, Amstel Gold Race, Züricher Radspiele and the Frankfurter Opera. When it comes to sports, Swan Air has sponsored many teams, mostly in football and hockey. Currently, Swan Air is the sponsors of Racing Differdange, Lechia Gdansk, Darlington FC, etc. In the past, Swan Air also sponsored Reading FC, AFC Bournemouth, SV Amersfoort, Maccabi Netanya and several hockey teams in Rivierenland.

Destinations

---

page=dispatch/id=1341254

(Note that some destinations are performed by other (local) airlines but are registered as Swan Air flights and thus some destinations are listed as Swan Air destinations)

Codeshare agreements
SWA also has codeshare agreements with several airlines. All airlines in the Star Alliance have codeshare agreements with Swan Air, and some notable airlines outside of the Star Alliance that have agreements with SWA are listed here below:

• American Airlines

• British Airways

• Emirates

• Etihad

• JAL

• Kinia Airlines

• Qantas

• Qatar Airways

Fleet

---

page=dispatch/id=1341275
Current fleet

Aircraft	In service	Notes
Airbus A300	25	To be fully replaced with E175's by 2025
Airbus A318	68	To be replaced with A320's by 2025
Airbus A321	32
Airbus A330	100	Ten are painted in the Star Alliance livery
Airbus A350	30
Embraer E175	25	One is painted in the Laverjet livery
Saab 340	10	To be retired by 2022
Airbus A330F	5

Historical Fleet (excluding KRL)

Aircraft	Years in service	Notes
Airbus A310	1988-2003
Boeing 737-500	2004-2017
Boeing 737-600	2005-2017
Boeing 747-200	1993-2006
Boeing 717	1998-2000	Leased from Delta
MD-11	1996-2018
MD-80	2000-2018
Tupolev Tu-204	2004-2012	Leased from Aeroflot
Fokker 70	1992-2018

Special liveries

• For the 2006 World Cup hosted in Rivierenland, several aircraft were painted with a football on the nose

• There are ten A330's who are painted in the silver and black Star Alliance livery

• A few Fokker 70's were painted in a black and gold livery in 1997 to celebrate Rivierenland's 300 year anniversary

Service

---

Fingerprint biometric identification
In 2006, Swan Air launched a new biometric system for use throughout Rivierenland. Each passenger's fingerprints are, for security purposes, matched to their respective checked baggage. The new technology will be phased in at all the airports served by Swan Air, although the use of the system is voluntary for passengers.

Flying Swan
SWA's frequent-flyer program is called Flying Swan. Members earn points on all Swan Air, Transavia and Edelweiss flights as well as on Star Alliance flights. The Flying Swan program has more than four million members.

Fly home club
The Fly home club was founded in the wake of the 2009 European economic crisis to guarantee the return of Rivierenlanders who lived in Southern European countries and Ireland who decided to go back home due to worsening economic conditions.

WiFi
In May 2018, Swan Air launched a new high-speed WiFi system supplied by T-Mobile. The service is being rolled out on Swan Air short and medium-haul fleet and is expected to take two years to complete. The new system is much faster than previously available and will enable passengers to stream movies on board. Before this, Swan Air only offered WiFi on board on its long haul aircraft and a small number of Airbus A300's. WiFi is free for Flying Swan Gold and Diamond members as well as for those travelling in Swan Air Plus or Business. Otherwise, WiFi can be purchased with Swan Air points or for a small fee.

Bus services and train codeshares
Swan Air has bus services for customers living in certain cities without flights from Swan Air, transporting them to airports where they may board Swan Air flights. It operates buses from Nijmegen railway station and Arnhem Central Station in Rivierenland to Amsterdam Schiphol, and from Ottawa Railway Station to Montreal Dorval Airport in Quebec. In addition Swan Air has codeshares with Thalys and SNCF services so passengers from various French cities may travel to Charles de Gaulle Airport.

Incidents and Accidents

---

Despite having existed for around 30 years, Swan Air has had some bad crashes, although these aren't very common. When crashes happened, they were mostly non-fatal.

• In May of 1989, an A310 overran the runway at Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport after the pilot miscalculated the approach. Out of the 89 passengers on board, only a dozen had gotten injured.

• In September of 1994, a Fokker 70 bound for Madrid took off from the taxiway at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport after the crew failed to spot where exactly they were because of thick fog.

• In January of 1995, Swan Air flight 67 (a Saab 340) crashed on approach for Flughafen Frankfurt-am-Main after the aircraft ran out of fuel. Out of the 32 passengers on board, 23 were injured, with 5 of them being hospitalized.

• In November of 2001, Swan Air flight 892 (an MD-80 flying from Eindhoven to Paris Orly) was accompanied by 2 F-16's of the Royal Rivierenlander Air Force after an ATC controller reported strange activity from the aircraft. After the aircraft was forced to land in Charleroi, it was reported that it was actually a fault in the aircraft's systems that was causing the ATC controller to see strange activity. The aircraft then proceeded to Paris and arrived an hour behind schedule.

• In October of 2004, a newly-leased Tupolev Tu-204 that was bound for Schiphol was forced to land in Hamburg because the ground crew back in Moscow had fueled the aircraft insufficiently.

• In June of 2014, Swan Air flight 284 (an MD-11) flying from Zürich Airport to Vancouver International Airport had crashed somewhere in Greenland. The accident was the top story in Rivierenland for a year and was Swan Air's first fatal accident. The investigation took 1 and a half years and when the investigation was concluded, it was publicized in an extensive report that the aircraft ran out of fuel and crashed as a result. In the aftermath of this accident, ground crew all over Rivierenland were retrained on how to properly fuel aircraft. This was the deadliest aviation disaster in Greenland and the deadliest disaster involving a Rivierenlander aircraft ever. All 289 passengers on board died.