SWISS pilots concerned over safety of Israel flights
Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) pilots and flight attendants are increasingly cancelling their flights to Israel due to safety concerns.
The airline is now changing its procedures to ensure that all flights can operate as planned.
In response to an enquiry from the Swiss News Agency Keystone-SDA on Thursday, SWISS announced that it was taking steps to counteract this, as other crew members have to stand in for cancellations and may then be assigned more often than average on the same routes.
Many cancellations at short notice have led to an increased planning effort. From Saturday, staff will have to cancel at least seven days before a flight to Israel, according to the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper on Wednesday.
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There are no concrete figures on how many crew members have cancelled their Israel flights. “On some flights no one has cancelled, on others one or more crew members have cancelled,” said a SWISS spokesperson.
Previously, SWISS crew members flew back to Zurich from Tel Aviv on the same day. From May, the airline will fly twice a day again, as it did before the war. Due to flight and duty time limitations, which provide for extended rest periods at night, crew members will also have to spend the night in Tel Aviv, the statement continued.
SWISS said it understood the concerns of some crew members. Specialists have examined the situation and concluded that it was stable and safe.
Adapted from German by DeepL/kp
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