“Excuse me, are you the pilot or the co-pilot?” (My sky-high life)

First Officer Thierry Beyeler

“Excuse me, are you the pilot or the co-pilot?”

“I’m the First Officer, also known as co-pilot, who, however, is also a pilot”

“What?”

That is a question I was asked by one of our honourable passengers yesterday. And I’ve been asked this question many times before. Trying to explain the difference is not that simple. People are confused about this issue. They think that there is only one pilot. There are two. If you say you’re the co-pilot they think you can’t fly the plane, which is obviously wrong. For the benefit of our blog readers, I would like to give a brief explanation of the difference:

Two pilots
Our Airbus must be flown by two pilots. There is a Commander (left seat) and a First Officer (right seat) in the cockpit. Both of them are pilots. But the rank is different. The Commander has the main responsibility for the aircraft. He is the “chief”. We have a flat hierarchy in the cockpit, but we do have one.

こんにちは, 你好, olá!

Do you have difficulty understanding what’s written in the line above? Well, that’s exactly the same problem a lot of people around the world face when visiting swiss.com…up until now. 

Hong Li Vu, Marcelo Golovattei and HeeAe Yoo-Wyssen, Intern E-Commerce Zurich

Swiss.com currently appears in five languages, with English serving as its global language. But in some countries with a dominant and widespread local language, such as Brazil, China or Japan, English is not widely spoken.

As we are dedicated to providing the highest possible quality in all our products and services, reducing the language barrier is a matter of course. The “New Language Project” will therefore expand from five to eight the number of official languages in which our website appears.

SWISS on Instagram (@FlySWISS)

Rumi Sakunaga, e-Line Management

Hi this is Rumi from Tokyo, taking over SWISS on Instagram for the month of September. I’m based in SWISS Tokyo Office and responsible for online marketing and social media. Joining the SWISS Tokyo team in March this year, one of my biggest tasks is to look after the renewed SWISS.COM in which Japanese will be integrated as country page. This is why I have to start off this month’s Instagram with pictures of my training scenes at Zurich head office.

I am already excited to introduce you to some of my colleagues working hard in Zurich and also to share many pictures from the great metropolitan city of Tokyo!  

Thank you for following us! 
Rumi