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SwissairSwissair, short for "Swiss Air Transport Company Limited," was Switzerland's national air carrier for seventy-one years until 2002. The airline had important hubs at Zurich International Airport in Zurich, Switzerland, and Cointrin International Airport in Geneva. On 2 September 1998, Swissair Flight 111, an MD-11 heading to Cointrin from JFK crashed at night in the Atlantic Ocean fifty miles southwest of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Smoke had been reported in the cabin and the aircraft was attempting to land at Halifax International Airport when it crashed. All 15 crew members and 214 passengers perished. In the 1990s, Swissair started a large expansion program, acquiring in particular 49.5% of Sabena, the national Belgian airline. This strategy, however, proved to be too costly, and Swissair was grounded in October 2001 because of liquidity problems. On March 31, 2002, it passed out of existence as most of its assets were taken over by Crossair which then changed names to Swiss International Air Lines. Swissair used the IATA designator code SR and the ICAO designator code SWR. See also
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