Like other airlines of smaller countries, Swissair now was under significant pressure. More and more national airlines affiliated themselves with airline alliances to maintain a worldwide market presence. But to be interesting for American alliance partners, an airline must have a critical size in terms of passenger numbers. To meet that goal, in 1993 an alliance between Swissair, KLM, SAS, and Austrian Airlines was proposed. This project bore the name "Alcazar" to create a single Central European airline. But in various countries, this project was criticized. In Switzerland itself, it was thought that the huge financial assets were too precious to merge Swissair with the other airlines.