The Swiss airline SWISS can look back on a challenging summer travel season: In addition to strikes, thunderstorms and a staff shortage, which increasingly aggravated the general conditions of the airline, SWISS was able to record 1,7 million passengers in the summer season.

The summer travel season was not just a sense of achievement for the Swiss airline SWISS. This summer, the carrier faced a number of problems that made it difficult for the summer season to be successful. There were a lot of strikes across Europe, the weather didn't always cooperate, which had to or could have led to complications in flight operations or a shortage of staff, which resulted in numerous delays. Despite these difficult conditions, the Swiss national carrier was able to handle 1,7 million passengers during the summer travel season. However, these general conditions did not allow the airline to exploit its full potential, as can be seen by comparing the load factor with 2019. SWISS has not yet been able to reach the pre-crisis level, the capacity was 85 percent of the year 2019.

“We also added buffers, kept more crews on standby and provided reserve aircraft. These efforts have paid off: SWISS flight operations were extremely stable during the summer vacation period, which was our top priority. We have achieved this goal,” says Oliver Buchhofer, Head of Operations at SWISS. The so-called flight schedule stability was 98,9 percent during the summer vacation period from mid-July to mid-August. SWISS operated most of its flights as planned. "This made us one of the most stable airlines in Europe," continued Buchhofer.

Also in terms of punctuality, which the Swiss carrier has always valued to date, no convincing figures could be achieved, justified by external factors such as the weather. In the last four weeks, around 48 percent of flights departed on time, around 25 percent of which were delayed.