Swiss stumbled during the pandemic - a guarantee from the federal government flushed fresh money into the coffers. Now the Lufthansa subsidiary has already repaid the loan.

The group repaid a bank loan guaranteed by the federal government ahead of schedule. The Lufthansa Group will in future secure financing via the capital market, as the company announced on Thursday. Actually, this would have continued until 2025. This credit line was granted in spring 2020 in connection with the corona pandemic, which caused major problems for air traffic.

The banks granted Swiss and Edelweiss a credit line of up to CHF 1,5 billion. The federal government guaranteed 85 percent of the default risk – i.e. a maximum of CHF 1,275 billion. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Swiss has “never used more than half of the bridging loan and paid a total of 60 million francs in interest and fees,” as the company writes.

“We are very grateful to the federal government that, together with the Swiss and Edelweiss banks, it provided the liquidity needed during the corona pandemic. As a result, we were able to secure a large part of the jobs in Switzerland and sustainably competitive cost structures, as well as maintaining our connection to the world even during the pandemic. In addition, we were able to ramp up our hub in Zurich in line with the other hubs of the Lufthansa Group and develop our flight offering proportionally," says Swiss CEO Dieter Vranckx.