History
Swissair (Swiss Air Transport Company Limited) is the former national airline of Switzerland. It was formed of a merger between Balair and Ad Astra Aero (To the Stars), in 1931. For most of its 71 years, Swissair was known as the "Flying Bank" due to the financial stability of the airline, causing it be regarded as a Swiss national symbol and icon.
Nearly 30 percent of Swissair stock was owned by the Swiss government, and at the demise of the airline, Swissair belonged to the holding company SAirGroup, the regional airline Crossair, and the charter company Balair. Its major hubs until the early 90's were at Zürich International Airport and Geneva Cointrin International Airport.

History
In the 1990s Swissair initiated a large expansion program known as the "Hunter Strategy" in which it aimed to grow by buying small airlines instead of forming alliances. It acquired 49.5 percent of Sabena, the Belgian national airline, and bought important stakes in several minor airlines like Air Liberté, AOM, Air Littoral, Volare, LOT, Air Europe, TAP Portugal, Turkish Airlines, South African Airways, Portugalia and the German holiday carrier LTU.
The financing of the Hunter Strategy proved too costly, and coupled with increasing losses in their investments, Swissair parent SAirGroup faced a cashflow crisis. This was partly due to the slump in demand following the terror attacks in the USA on 9/11. On October 2, 2001 the entire Swissair fleet was grounded.[1] Many blamed the largest bank in Switzerland, UBS AG, for the fiasco, because UBS refused to extend Swissair's line of credit. The day after the grounding, demonstrators could be seen carrying reading "Bin Ospel" (referring to Marcel Ospel, the UBS chairman) and "UBS = United Bandits of Switzerland".
Two large bridge loans from the Swiss Federation were needed to finance the continuation of flight operations. When flights resumed, captains had to carry large sums of cash in order to provide collateral for fuel purchases at foreign airports. Finally, on March 31, 2002, Crossair took over most of the assets from Swissair, and Swissair ceased to be. Assets that were not taken over by Crossair were liquidated by Kurt Hoss Liquidators in Zürich. Finally, Crossair was renamed Swiss International Air Lines. It is now usually known simply as "Swiss".
Crossair restarted the company in 2001 and the successor airlines Swiss International Air Lines and Swiss European Air Lines were born. These two airlines are divisions of Swiss, the parent company. Recently, Swiss merged into the Lufthansa Group and Deutsche Lufthansa AG, the flag carrier of Germany.