Morel, Jean-Paul - Swissair, passion d’une vie - Swissair, the passion of a lifetime

Swissair, the passion of a lifetime

Jean-Paul Morel

Editions Nicolas Junod, 2019

Swissair, a family story!
Marc Morel joins Air France 37 days after its creation in 1933. His inspector: a certain Jean Mermoz. Two years after the liberation, in a country ruined by the Second World War, Marc Morel sets up the French subsidiary of Swissair, on the Place de l'Opéra.
In 1962, he handed over the keys to the "House" to take a well-deserved retirement.
Twelve years later, his son Jean-Paul Morel continued the family epic, which continues to merge, through the pages of this book, with that of the Swiss air carrier. His career took him successively to Paris, Mulhouse, Frankfurt, Geneva, Abidjan, Tripoli...
Through a family saga in the service of Swissair for 50 years, the company reveals itself and presents itself in a book richly illustrated with rare documents, both personal and family.
A pleasant walk through the glorious thirty years that enabled the Swiss company to go from being a pioneer in aviation to a world carrier on five continents. We go from the single-engine aircraft to the Airbus; we witness the blossoming of Cointrin, Kloten and Basel-Mulhouse; we follow the development of the KSSU consortium; we better understand the importance of air traffic between France and Switzerland; we apprehend the history through the prism of advertising posters or philately.
It would seem that Swissair is synonymous with the history of Douglas: from the DC-2 to the DC-10, the company has not missed a single one, including the DC-3, DC-4, DC-6, DC-7, DC-8 and DC-9... But it also played a major role in the history of Convair with the 440 Metropolitan and the 990 Coronado (not forgetting Caravelle, Airbus and the 747). And if air freight is widely described, it is probably the transposition of Swiss hotel excellence into the skies that is most appealing.
One smiles at the evocation of the time when the weighing of passengers was indispensable at check-in. Then, like the author, one feels a twinge of sadness at the thought of the disappearance of this aeronautical "institution".
Nostalgia, when you hold us ...
A superb book.

240 pages - in French - 180 colour illustrations