No surprise: the effects of the corona pandemic are leaving deep marks on Swiss’s business results. In the first half of 2020, the Swiss airline recorded an operating loss of CHF 266,4 million.

Sales also slumped compared to the previous year. And that by more than half to 1,17 billion Swiss francs. The Corona-related flight cancellations also led to a significant decline in operating income in Q2. At CHF 243,7 million, this was 82,8 percent below the previous year's figure (CHF 1,41 billion).

“Thanks to the early measures to secure liquidity, we were able to significantly reduce our fixed costs. Liquidity is secured with the loan from the Lufthansa Group and the bank loan guaranteed by the federal government. However, we must continue to structurally reduce our costs in order to be able to repay the loans as soon as possible, ”says Markus Binkert, CFO of Swiss.

In the first half of this year, Swiss carried a total of 3.167.624 passengers. This corresponds to a decrease of 64 percent compared to the same period of the previous year. Swiss operated a total of 29.667 flights, 59,5 percent fewer than in the first half of 2019. The sharpest drop in passengers compared to the previous year was recorded in April (99,2 percent). 

Flight operations are to be restarted in small steps. But one remains modest. “The positive development in demand for travel in Europe makes us cautiously optimistic. However, we are aware that there is still a long way to go before this crisis is over. Decisive for a sustainable and significant recovery will be the further development of intercontinental traffic, especially in our most important traffic region North America ”, says Swiss CEO Thomas Klühr.