SWISS provided its customers with generally stable flight operations over the Swiss autumn holiday period, and carried more than 1.3 million passengers to their destinations – almost 82,000 more than it had in the same period last year.
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SWISSSwiss International Air Lines (SWISS) transported more than 1.3 million passengers in this year’s peak autumn travel period, which extended from Friday 27 September to Sunday 20 October (inclusive). A total of 10,211 flights were operated during the period. The numbers both represent an increase of some 6.5 per cent over the same period last year (2023 autumn holidays: around 1.2 million passengers carried on 9,565 flights). SWISS also transported more than 900,000 bags in its aircraft’s cargo holds over the same holiday period – more than 98 per cent of them as scheduled and without delays. This year’s peak traffic day was Sunday 6 October, at the start of the autumn holidays in Canton Zurich and elsewhere, when the company carried a total of 60,863 travellers to their destinations.
65 per cent of flights arrived on time
For the end of September to mid-October period, just under 62 per cent of SWISS flights departed on time* – one percentage point fewer than the 63 per cent of the prior-year period. The slight decline is attributable largely to external factors such as weather conditions, which substantially restricted operations at SWISS’s Zurich hub. The weather in Zurich was particularly limiting over this year’s autumn holiday period, with airport arrival and departure capacities reduced by up to one-third at times every other day. The prime cause of these weather-related restrictions was unfavourable westerly winds and the ‘bise’ wind from the east, which both required changes to the use of the airport’s runways. These in turn created intersecting arrival and departure routes, which demand greater time separations between landing aircraft. The situation was exacerbated by several days of foggy and difficult wind conditions in neighbouring countries, which further added to delays.
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Just under 63 per cent of all SWISS flights have departed on time in 2024 to date. In some cases, the crews have been able to make up at least some of their departure delay en route: more than 65 per cent of all SWISS flights in the autumn holiday period arrived at their destination on time, and 82 per cent of them landed with less than half an hour’s delay.
“We must clearly improve our punctuality”
“With the many challenges we faced, I am broadly pleased with the way we mastered our second most important holiday season of the year after the summer months,” says SWISS Chief Operating Officer Oliver Buchhofer. “The weather conditions and further operating parameters were far from easy. But we managed to fly our guests to their autumn holidays safely, reliably and generally on time. That we were able to do so is thanks to the huge and tireless efforts of our entire SWISS team, on the ground and in the air.”
“At the same time,” COO Buchhofer continues, “we cannot be satisfied with our present punctuality. We were only able to achieve our on-time performance targets over the autumn holiday period on days when the weather played ball and the capacity shortages at Zurich Airport and in European airspace remained within reasonable bounds. We must make ourselves more robust. And we have initiated a number of actions over the past few months that should help us do so. We continue to work closely with our system partners, too, to further improve our own processes and procedures on the ground and in the air and to make ourselves generally more resilient to adverse external factors.”
Stable schedules despite exogenous challenges
SWISS achieved a schedule stability* of 97.7 per cent for the 2024 autumn holiday period, i.e. only 2.3 per cent of the flights which it had offered three months previously had to be cancelled at short notice. The reasons for such cancellations included stormy weather conditions in various European countries and developments in the Middle East, which compelled the company to suspend its services to Tel Aviv and Beirut.
* On-time performance: the percentage of flights departing or arriving within 15 minutes of their scheduled departure/arrival time
* Stability: the percentage of flights operated as offered 12 weeks before
Top 5 SWISS destinations in the 2024 autumn holiday period (27 September to 20 October)
Short-haul:
- Alicante
- Lisbon
- Malta
- Valencia
- Thessaloniki
Long-haul:
- Johannesburg
- Montreal
- São Paulo
- Chicago
- Toronto
Source: SWISS
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