The Christmas and New Year holiday period is particularly popular for travel, and the trend is clearly reflected in SWISS’s passenger numbers. SWISS is pleased to announce that it transported a total of 546,961 travellers during this time. It can report broadly positive flight operations, too: the company and its employees were able to perform just under 99 per cent of its flights as scheduled – despite partially adverse weather conditions at airports which prompted some delays, and despite sizeable volumes of sickness-related absences among both ground and flying personnel.

Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) can report a broadly positive performance in its flight operations over the Christmas and New Year holiday period. Between Friday 22 December 2023 and Tuesday 2 January 2024, the company and its employees transported 546,961 travellers to their air destination. In doing so, the company achieved a schedule stability, i.e. the proportion of total flights operated as offered (albeit possibly with delays), of 98.5 per cent. In the previous Christmas and New Year holiday period, SWISS had carried 467,955 passengers with a schedule stability of 99.4 per cent.

“I am delighted that we achieved our objective and were able to almost always maintain our schedules, even over the busy Christmas days,” says SWISS Head of Operations Oliver Buchhofer. “As a result, we were able to get so many of our customers reliably to their family and friends to enjoy the holidays together. Just like the busy summer holiday season, this is always quite a challenge. But, thanks to the excellent and exceptional work and dedication of all our people at SWISS, it’s one that we were able to meet and master once again.”

Delays owing to snow, wind and sickness-related absences

While SWISS was able to operate a large proportion of its Christmas season services as scheduled, the last two weeks did see a number of delays, along with 58 flight cancellations. “The weather proved a particular challenge,” Oliver Buchhofer explains. “Strong winds, frost and snow hampered our flight operations – severely in some cases – and we did experience delays. Also, like the rest of Switzerland, we had our fair share of a wave of colds and flu, and a number of our people had to call in sick. So I’d like to say an even bigger thank-you to all our employees and our partners who did so much for our passengers over the past two weeks, in the air and on the ground.”

Some 17 per cent of all SWISS flights arrived at their destination with a delay of over 30 minutes. More than half of all departures – 58 per cent – were on time, i.e. they took off within 15 minutes of their scheduled departure time. Most delays occur at the airport prior to departure, and some of these can be recouped en route. 

SWISS’s clear operational priority over the Christmas and New Year period was to perform as many of its scheduled services as possible. “In the festive season in particular, it’s vitally important to reliably get our passengers to where they want to go, so that they don’t miss the opportunity to spend these days with their loved ones,” stresses Oliver Buchhofer. “And that’s why we put our operational emphasis squarely on our schedule stability.”

SWISS already announced last summer that it would be taking a series of actions to substantially improve the punctuality of its flights.