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SWISS sees profits climb in busy third quarter

SWISS airplane waits on tarmac.
The airline made an operating profit of CHF277.6 million during the three summer months, compared to CHF220.5 million the previous year. © Keystone / Ennio Leanza

Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) reported higher profits in the third quarter. During the busy summer period, 99% of its flights were carried out, despite strikes, difficult weather or staff shortages at partner companies.

The airline made an operating profit of CHF277.6 million during the three summer months, compared to CHF220.5 million the previous year.

From July to September, SWISS also increased sales by almost 11% to CHF1.5 billion, it announced on Thursday. 

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Sales for the first nine months of this year hit CHF4 billion – almost the same as in the year before the Covid-19 pandemic. The operating profit climbed massively to CHF615.9 million. Last year, Swiss had a surplus of CHF287.5 million; before the pandemic it was CHF490 million.

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This is the strongest operating result in the company’s history, SWISS said. The aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic is more than over at the Lufthansa subsidiary. At the start of the pandemic in 2020, sales collapsed and the company posted losses quarter after quarter.

“Our competitive cost structures benefited us as a result of the restructuring in connection with the pandemic. For example, our administrative costs remain below the level before the pandemic,” Chief Financial Officer Markus Binkert said in a statement.

For the full year 2023, Swiss now expects “a very good result,” it said.

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here

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