Together with the welcoming of its new Boeing 777, Swiss also celebrated the opening of a new lounge complex on top of Terminal E: A new haven of tranquillity and exclusivity for its more privileged guests. The whole complex spans over 3’300m2, sits about 500 people, features 2'700 power sockets, and is designed in a zone concept that mixes general sitting zones and open cooking stations with more private areas for business and relaxation. All three lounges share a large outdoor terrace with great views of the aircraft parked at the southern E gates, Runway 28, and a panoramic view of the Swiss Alps if weather permits.
Guests and journalists were invited to have a look around the new Business Lounge first, while the Senator and First Lounges were opened a bit later on. So let’s check out the 1’200 m2-sized Business Lounge to start!

 

Business Lounge

Champagne aplenty!

The core area of the lounge centers around this out of place furniture display - just in case you wanna buy a lounge chair and a strange elephant sculpture in transit from Belgrade to Singapore. Be careful when fitting them into the overhead bins though!

Another seating area, featuring one of the trademark Jura Limestone walls that can be found in lounges throughout the SWISS network. 

 

Even if you just wanna grab a coffee, your favourite airline is always there at your side - or in your eyes. And if you don't like coffee, it also provides ample booze for you. 

In case you're more into activating your braincells instead of just drowning them, these work stations might be your thing

My favourite place however are these chairs with amazing views!

Back at IKEA errr...the center of the lounge

Hopefully the food tastes just as good as this area looks: The "front cooking" station. In this moment the chefs can be observed during their daily before-service meditation - most certainly a prerequisite for whipping up some extraordinary meals. 

Lovely presentation - except for the foodwaste aspect maybe...

Time for talking: Uncle Harry, who looks a bit tired after his 10-hour flight from Seattle on board the Boeing 777, quite literally hands over the controls to his successor, the new SWISS CEO Thomas Klühr

 

 

Senator Lounge

The general seating area looks quite the same here

Love that display, and if I had a cleaning lady I'd instantly set up something similar in my kitchen :)

You guessed it, it's part of another live cooking station. Quite obviously, the meditation phase is over and the chefs have sprung into action.

If you're not looking for a fancy meal, just grab a bite to eat here...

And if it's alcohol you're craving, here's your wall!

But there's more booze waiting for you! To get to it however, you have to endure 30 meters of beautiful Swiss alpine panorama first - or at least a fancy wall-panel rendition of it. What that armada of white mini-tables are good for I don't know, but anything table-like that doesn't have a chair sitting in front of it is highly suspicious to me anyway, so I didn't dare to investigate any further...

After you pass by the modern-day phone-booths you can head straight for the Senator Lounge's secret highlight: the Whiskey Club! 

Here, more than 120 different whiskeys await - just watch out not to stagger too much when boarding your onward flight!

 

And if after all this booze you need a place to lie down, there's plenty of panoramic chairs to choose from! 

 

 

First Class / HON Lounge

This classy lounge for the airline's top tier covers an area of over 750m2...

And of course it centers, once again, around...you guessed it...booze. Corresponding to the more sophisticated clientele in this most restricted of areas, it features a Champagne Bar and a wine humidor containing approximately 1'000 (!) bottles...

 

The alcohol is clearly doing its job - I'm already getting dizzy simply by scrolling over this image!

...and an À la Carte Restaurant

If that's been too much booze for you, the toilets and showers looke pretty neat too! 

There are several plush seating areas all complete with TVs, which can be turned into your private living room with a view by closing the movable walls...

Same applies to this "meeting room", which is also marketed for familiy get-togethers between two flights. Like, for example, if you are on your business trip from New York to Dubai, your sister and her five kids are transiting from Johannesburg to Orlando for a week at Disneyland, your parents are heading to Singapore to board a luxury cruise and your grandma is enroute to Canada to go moose-hunting, and you just happen to bump all into one-another in Zurich (and are all flying First Class of course). You’re probably spending the GDP of a small country on airline fares alone but hey, at least you have a table with holes in it to congregate around in style, and a beautiful concrete wall to stare at if you can't stand the faces of your family members anymore! 

Anyway, if you do have the money, you also get this amazing view from the generous outdoor terrace. It is even planned to serve Fondue and Raclette out here during the summer months...!

The most astonishing feature however are two private hotel rooms which are given out to First Class customers on a first come, first serve basis. So make sure to queue for a room first before tasting your way through all the different bars!

Now, after this extensive look around the new lounges, it's finally time to head back and check out the airline's core product (or is it?): its new airplane, the Boeing 777.