SWISS dissatisfied with summer punctuality

SWISS said the general operating conditions it faced this summer were “very challenging” © Keystone / Urs Flueeler

Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) has reported “mixed results” for this year’s summer holiday season. Although almost all scheduled flights could be carried out, it experienced numerous delays.

“The stability of our flight operations was pleasing, but punctuality was not,” said Oliver Buchhofer, SWISS’s head of operations, on Friday.

He said conservative planning using buffers – for example by rostering more reserve crews and providing reserve aircraft – had paid off, both in terms of aircraft and staff. The stability of flight operations was correspondingly high: SWISS said it had been able to operate 98.9% of scheduled flights during the summer holidays.

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From July 15 to August 15, the Lufthansa subsidiary operated a total of 12,870 flights. However, almost half of these (48%) were not punctual – defined by SWISS as taking off within 15 minutes of the scheduled time of departure.

When it came to arrivals, a quarter of flights were delayed – touching down more than 30 minutes after the scheduled time of arrival. “We did not live up to our standards here,” Buchhofer admitted.

Room for improvement

The general operating conditions which SWISS faced in this year’s summer holiday season were “very challenging”, the airline said in a statementExternal link on Friday.

An unusually high incidence of adverse wind conditions, strikes in various European countries and shortages of staff – and of air traffic controllers in particular – significantly impaired the company’s flight operations, it said.

To counter these challenges and maintain stable flight schedules, SWISS offered no more than about 85% of its pre-pandemic capacities, with the aim of ensuring schedule reliability.

“We achieved our intermediate goal of offering our passengers flight services that were as reliable as possible. And I’m hugely grateful for the outstanding performance that our employees delivered over the past few weeks,” Buchhofer said.

“As a Swiss airline, we aspire to be punctual, too. And this is an aim that we didn’t achieve. We must improve here. And we’re already learning our lessons for summer 2024, and have already embarked on close consultations with our partners to this end.”