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10-JAN-2018
Zurich Airport
SWISS carries more passengers than ever in 2017 with fewer flights
Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS)1 transported 16,896,233 passengers in 2017, a further 2.3% improvement on last year’s record result. The new record was also achieved with fewer flights: 140,074 systemwide, a 4.0% decline. Of these, 121,885 (down 4.1%) were within Europe and 18,189 (down 3.3%) were on intercontinental routes.
Systemwide passenger capacity for the year was raised 3.1% in available seat-kilometre (ASK) terms. Systemwide traffic volume, measured in revenue passenger-kilometres (RPK), was up 4.5%. On its European network SWISS reduced its ASK capacity by 2.1% and saw RPK volume decline by 0.6%; and on intercontinental services ASK capacity was increased 5.4% while RPK traffic volume rose 6.5%.
Seat load factor for European services was improved 1.1 percentage points to 77.5%. Seat load factor for intercontinental services was raised 0.9 percentage points to 84.3%. Systemwide seat load factor for 2017 amounted to 82.4%, a year-on-year improvement of 1.1 percentage points.
The airfreight business of Swiss WorldCargo achieved a cargo load factor (by volume) of 80.1% for 2017, a 4.9-percentage-point improvement on its prior-year level. Annual cargo sales were also raised 13.0% in revenue tonne-kilometre terms.
In December 2017 SWISS carried 1,287,955 passengers, a 1.2% increase on the prior-year period. A total of 10,785 flights were operated in the month, 3.7% fewer than in December 2016.
December ASK capacity was up 2.8% on its prior-year level, while RPK traffic volume for the month was a 2.4% improvement on December 2016. Seat load factor slipped accordingly to 80.1%, a decline of 0.4 percentage points.
SWISS will publish its 2017 financial results on 15 March 2018.
Please note: to offer a full overview of the traffic performance of the airlines of the Lufthansa Group, we report all these carriers’ traffic results. This overview (in which the results for SWISS also include those of its sister carrier Edelweiss) is provided in the tables attached.
1 excluding Edelweiss
