The effects of the corona pandemic also gave Lufthansa subsidiary Swiss a bitter quarterly loss. The carrier wants to gradually restart flight operations.

The Corona crisis brought the airline Swiss an operating quarterly loss of 84,1 million Swiss francs. In the previous year there was an increase of 48,3 million francs. Sales fell by 20 percent to 923 million Swiss francs. The occupancy rate was 73,3 percent. According to the management, a forecast for the full year cannot be given due to the unclear situation surrounding the corona pandemic.

Markus Binkert, CFO of Swiss explained: “After a long-lasting corona pandemic became apparent, Swiss immediately initiated measures to cut costs. Together with financial support from the Lufthansa Group and state aid guaranteed by the federal government, we will be able to bridge the liquidity bottleneck. We will of course make every effort to repay the loans plus interest as quickly as possible. "

The financial result is reflected in the number of passengers: In the first three months of this year, Swiss carried a total of 2.991.974 passengers. This corresponds to a decrease of 21,4 percent compared to the same period in the previous year. Swiss operated a total of 27.270 flights, 19,2% fewer than in the first quarter of 2019. In the first three months of 2020, Swiss offered 15,9 percent fewer seat kilometers (ASK) on the entire route network, the number of seat kilometers sold (RPK ) fell by 21,5 percent. The load factor of the flights (SLF) averaged 73,3 percent. This means that they were less busy by 5,3 percentage points than in the previous year.

“We will gradually increase our range of flights in Zurich and Geneva. The aim is for us to be able to resume the so important intercontinental direct connections for the Swiss economy, politics, society and tourism. It will be built up gradually and will take two to three years. However, we will do everything we can to ensure that both passenger and freight traffic can be guaranteed in the best possible way under the respective circumstances, ”said Swiss boss Thomas Klühr.