SWISS was broadly satisfied with its flight operations over the Easter holiday period. Switzerland’s leading airline performed just under 1,600 flights between Good Friday and Easter Monday, transporting some 200,000 customers to their destinations. Schedule stability was kept very high at 99 per cent, while punctuality was somewhat below its prior-year levels owing primarily to challenging weather conditions. European and US cities were among the most popular Easter travel destinations.

The Easter holidays are a popular travel period. And this year, too, many people felt the urge to get away. Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) has expressed itself broadly satisfied with its flight operations over this year’s Easter holiday period. Between Good Friday (29 March) and Easter Monday (1 April) the airline performed just under 1,600 flights systemwide – 1.2 per cent more than it had in the 2023 Easter period. The services carried some 200,000 SWISS customers safely to their destinations, 4.5 per cent more than in the prior-year period. SWISS was also able to operate 99 per cent of its flights as envisaged over Easter 2024.

“We had taken a range of planning actions – such as building in extra ‘cushions’, rostering more standby crews and providing reserve aircraft – to keep our flight operations stable over this year’s Easter period,” explains SWISS Head of Operations Oliver Buchhofer. “We needed to do so: high schedule stability was our top priority, and it’s a goal we were able to achieve.”

Strong westerly winds over the Easter period

SWISS’s Zurich Airport hub experienced strong westerly winds throughout the Easter holiday period which reduced the airport’s operational capacity and caused corresponding delays. The associated disruption was felt on Easter Monday in particular. Further challenges were posed by the limited aircraft reserves available to recover time lost through such delays, as some of the aircraft concerned had to be used instead to cover capacities lost to technical issues. All in all, 73 per cent of SWISS’s flights over the Easter period departed on time (i.e. within 15 minutes of their scheduled time of departure) – a punctuality performance that was 7.7 percentage points down on Easter 2023.

Popular city destinations

London, Berlin and Palma de Mallorca were the most popular Easter destinations on the SWISS European network, while the US destinations of New York, Miami and San Francisco proved the top priorities among SWISS’s intercontinental travellers.