Zurich. One airport for the banks and the mountains, with your car waiting on the private side.

Zurich is a major scheduled hub and also one of the better business aviation airports in Europe, because the general aviation side is a separate facility with its own terminals, its own customs and immigration and its own access road. That means a private arrival does not touch the main terminals at all: the aircraft parks on the general aviation apron, clearance happens there, and the car meets it at the terminal door or, where the handling agent and the airport permit it, on stand.

From London the flight is about an hour and a half and it is comfortably within the range of a light or midsize jet, which is worth knowing because it changes the cost of the trip considerably. See private jet charter, light jets, midsize jets, Zurich Airport, the Zurich private terminals and London to Zurich.

Central Zurich is compact and a great deal of it is either pedestrianised, tram priority or one way. The banking quarter around Bahnhofstrasse and Paradeplatz has very little room for a car to stand, the lake shore hotels have short forecourts, and the Old Town streets on the Niederdorf side are largely closed to traffic. The practical skill here is knowing where a car can legitimately wait for three minutes and where it cannot wait at all, and which of the bridges to use at half past five.

Switzerland also enforces its traffic law rigorously. Speed limits are taken seriously and the penalties escalate sharply; parking is controlled and expensive; and the motorway network requires a vignette, which is handled as a matter of course. In winter, vehicles are expected to be on winter tyres and it is not the sort of thing anyone should be improvising on the day of a mountain transfer.

For Klosters and Davos the car is usually the right answer: it is under two hours in good conditions, the road is good as far as Landquart and the train is a genuine alternative for a single traveller. For St Moritz and the Engadin the arithmetic changes. Three hours by road each way, in winter, on passes, is a long day at both ends of a short stay, and Samedan is the reason people fly the last leg instead. It is an alpine airport with its own demands, so the aircraft, the crew and the weather all have to line up, and a road plan behind it is not optional.

A helicopter from Zurich is the third option and in the right conditions it is a transformation: half an hour rather than two or three. In the Davos forum week in January, however, helicopter movements and slots are contested weeks in advance and the roads are controlled as well, so that week has to be arranged early or not at all. See Davos and Klosters, St Moritz, Samedan, helicopter charter and the Davos forum.

Our own cars and chauffeurs are in London and Manchester, and a trusted global network covers everywhere else. In Switzerland, vehicles and chauffeurs are arranged through operators we know and have used, and aircraft and helicopters are arranged on your behalf. What does not change is that one person at Odyssey holds the whole chain: the London collection, the departure terminal, the handling at Kloten, the transfer into the mountains and the return.

That single point of contact is worth most on the trips where something moves. A delayed departure from London in January is not simply a later arrival in Zurich: it is a mountain road after dark, a booking held or lost and a driver who needs telling. We would rather be the ones making those calls. See private jet transfers, the operations centre and travel management.