Zurich
Airport

Yes. Zurich handles private traffic alongside a very large scheduled operation, and the infrastructure is excellent: three runways, the longest at 12,139 feet, ICAO Category 10 fire cover, full customs and fuel, and rail connections across Switzerland and Europe from the airport itself. What Zurich does not offer is flexibility. Private movements are fitted around airline operations rather than the other way round.

Yes. Movements at Zurich are coordinated and a private flight needs its slot in the same way a scheduled service does. Requests should go in as early as the schedule is known. A late change is materially harder to accommodate here than at a smaller Swiss field, and that difficulty is the single most common reason a Zurich plan has to move.

Yes, and it allows no exceptions. Slot Coordination Switzerland publishes the curfew for slot allocation as 2300 to 0609 CET for arrivals and 2246 to 0544 CET for departures. Any movement inside that window needs a special permit rather than a request.

The latest possible allocated departure slot for a charter flight is 2145 CET. An extended curfew applies to charter operations, both series and ad hoc, as well as to training and technical flights, and it bites roughly an hour before the general departure curfew at 2246. This is the single most commonly missed constraint at Zurich, because crews plan against the published curfew rather than the charter one.

Strictly. The filed flight plan is expected to match the allocated slot, and Zurich is known among coordinators for tight adherence rather than tolerance. Combined with a no-exception curfew, that means a Zurich schedule wants building with margin rather than optimism.

Yes. Handling has to go through an approved agent. That is normal for a Swiss airport of this size and it is not a meaningful cost driver, but it does mean the handling arrangement is part of the booking rather than something arranged on arrival.

Three, in a crossing layout. 16/34 is the longest at 12,139 feet by 197 feet. 14/32 is 10,827 feet. 10/28 is 8,202 feet. The crossing geometry is part of why Zurich's capacity is sensitive to wind and to the noise rules governing which directions may be used at which times.

1,416 feet. High enough to matter in a performance calculation on a hot day with a full cabin, but not a constraint in the way an Alpine field is. Zurich is a lowland airport by Swiss standards.

Nine kilometres north of central Zurich, spread across the municipalities of Kloten, Rumlang, Oberglatt, Winkel and Opfikon in the canton of Zurich. The rail station is in the airport, with direct services to Zurich main station and onward across Switzerland and into Europe, which for many trips beats arranging ground transport.

Because the alternative was rejected. Zurich's commercial flying began at Dubendorf, which the canton considered expanding after the Second World War. In March 1943 the cantonal government commissioned a study, and the consortium that produced it advised against Dubendorf and recommended the moorland between Kloten and Oberglatt instead, largely because of the difficulty of running a shared military and civil field. The Federal Military Department agreed to give up the armoury site in August 1943, and the third and final version of the project was approved on 31 July 1944 at 54.4 million francs for 215 hectares.

It depends on where you are going, and the two are less interchangeable than they look. Zurich serves German-speaking Switzerland, the financial district and the east. Geneva serves the west, the Lake Geneva region and, decisively, the Alps. In the ski season Geneva is under pressure that Zurich is not. For central Switzerland, Buochs is often quicker than either.

For central Switzerland, Buochs on Lake Lucerne is genuinely closer for a good number of destinations and has no slot requirement, though it has no de-icing and its customs needs a day's notice. Dubendorf is nine kilometres away but is a military air base and not available for ordinary charter. During the World Economic Forum the whole Zurich area tightens considerably and parking becomes the binding constraint.

Davos generates a concentrated surge of private traffic into the Zurich area every January, and overnight parking restrictions have applied at Zurich in past years. Dubendorf takes overflow parking for private and government aircraft during the forum. If you are flying into the WEF, the parking plan matters more than the slot, and both want arranging a long way ahead.

Yes, Zurich is a full international airport with permanent customs and immigration. That is worth stating because it is precisely what the smaller Swiss fields do not have. At Buochs customs needs 24 hours notice and 48 at weekends. At Zurich it is simply there.

Central European Time, CET in winter and CEST in summer, which is UTC+1 and UTC+2 respectively.