Flex Swiss travel pass

You can buy the Swiss Travel Pass Flexi online while in the U.S. or wait until you arrive in Switzerland and buy it at the airport or train stations throughout Switzerland. Since you need to choose the starting date of the Pass at the time you buy it, it may be better to delay the online purchase until a few days before your trip.

I guess that brings up the question, how long will you be in Switzerland, when are you going, and where will you be going? There may be less expensive ways to accomplish this with more coverage for trips on other days.

Only spending 6 days in Switzerland so I saved our longer trips for the Pass. Don’t want to hassle with figuring out tickets. Lucerne to Steffisburg then Steffisburg to Mürren then Mürren to Zurich airport. We will just pay on our own Zurich airport to Lucerne.

With 6 days, the 6 Day regular Swiss Travel Pass might be a better option. Keep in mind that each time you use the Flex Pass, even if just to get a discount, that counts as one of your Pass days.

Here are the full fare ticket prices.
ZRH>Luzern: 31 CHF
Luzern>Steffisburg: 34 CHF
Steffisburg> Muerren: 39 CHF
Muerren> ZRH: 96.60 CHF

So buying a 3 day Flex Pass for 279 CHF will cost you an extra 110 CHF per person according to your plan. That's a lot for a bit of convenience.

It brings up what else you will be doing in these locations. Just walking around or taking other day trips, like the Schilthorn or Rigi Kulm?

Don’t want to hassle with figuring out tickets.

The thing is that being able to purchase your tickets on the SBB app is going to help you tremendously and it is really worth learning how to use it. You can just play around with it in the coming days and see how ti goes.

• Choose your starting point and destination
• Choose the time/train you want
• Do not worry if it there is a discount option, shown by a % sign, just because Supersaver tickets are available does not mean you have to buy them
• Click on ‘tickets from’
• Here is where you choose one way or return, first or second class, the default will be the regular priced ticket (with HFC), if there is a Supersaver ticket available you have to intentionally choose it. Do this only if you are certain you will take that exact train and travel route.

When you buy a ticket, it’s stored in the app, and you can track your route as you travel. You can see your current location, upcoming stops, and even get alerts for platform changes or train delays. The app also shows the train composition and the direction of travel. When you go to Steffisburg you will need to take the bus from Thun, but the app will show you this as well, just enter the name of the bus stop as your final destination, it will tell you your bus number and where to catch it once you arrive in Thun.

Overall, it’s such a useful tool that I wouldn’t travel without it.

The Swiss Travel Pass Flex is not very useful in my opinion.

I assume that on your non-travel days you will not be sitting in your hotel. You will be going about, may ride a cable car or a mountain railway.
And these cable cars and mountain railways also cost money.

So often when you are not doing enough travel to warrant a Swiss Travel Pass the next best option is the Swiss Half Fare Card. This gives you a 50% discount on all transportation. But wether that is worth it in your case depends a bit on how much you are planing to travel.

One last tip: The trip from Mürren back to ZRH buy your ticket in advance. SBB sells supersaver tickets, which are often heavily discounted, but are not flexible. For a trip to the airport that is not an issue though. I always buy a supersaver to the airport as soon as I have booked a flight.

One thing to be aware of is that public transit is fully integrated. So getting from Steffisburg to Mürren may involve a bus, several trains and a cable car, it is still going to be just one ticket. And that ticket you can buy using the app, or a ticket machine at the bus stop, or (in this case probably) in the bus itself.

I might also second as SwissNomad mentions, it’s really to your benefit to learn to use the SBB app. It tells you train times and which platform to use……especially helpful when there’s a five minute change between trains.

WOW, so many great ideas! Really appreciated. I am going to use the SBB app instead of flex pass. I downloaded the app but I am no sure if it is giving me the true price or half price. I read that it defaults to Half price.

I am no sure if it is giving me the true price or half price

Click on the profile - On my iPhone it is at the bottom right, there is an icon of a person. Here you put in your personal information and enter if you have a travel card (HFC) or not. Once you do that it will show you all prices according to the information you have entered.

I am going to use the SBB app instead of flex pass.

The SBB app is just to look up the transportation info. and purchase tickets. It does not provide any discounts. So, you might still want to look into getting a Pass or the Half Fare card for your trip. Then, you will use the SBB app to look up train/tram/bus/boat/cable car times and purchase any needed tickets.