SWISS: Our goal: Offering you excellent reliability

Dear guests,

We are delighted to welcome so many of you on board again and, as the Airline of Switzerland, to connect people, countries and cultures worldwide. The fact that we have finally put the coronavirus pandemic behind us and we are once again taking-off so successfully is also thanks to you, our valued guests. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to thank you for your trust in us and your continuous support.

We celebrated many successes this year, such as making travel more sustainable by expanding our Green Fares programme throughout Europe and on our domestic flights, reopened our fully refurbished Non-Schengen Lounge in Terminal D at Zurich Airport and introduced a new internet service on all our long-haul flights, allowing you to stay connected with various chat applications for free. However, we also had to face a number of operational challenges. In particular, external factors such as the difficult weather conditions in Zurich, Air Traffic Control, several strikes in Europe and staff shortages at our Swiss airport and handling partners have repeatedly challenged our punctuality over the past few months. However, we had set ourselves a clear goal for this summer: Maintaining our stability in this turbulent environment and thus offering you the greatest possible reliability was always our top priority. And we have succeeded.

Our partnership with Air Baltic should also be seen in the context of stability. People keep asking me why they have to board an Air Baltic plane when they have actually booked SWISS. I can confirm that we would prefer to operate all flights ourselves and welcome you on board of one of our airplanes. Unfortunately, one of our engine manufacturers is having technical problems and some of our short-haul airplanes are grounded because the engines must be serviced earlier than planned. In addition, the service duration is three times longer than before the crisis. Nevertheless, we want to be there for you reliably and not have to cancel any flights. We achieved this in summer 2023 thanks to our careful planning and thanks to the support of our partners Helvetic Airways and Air Baltic. 99 per cent of flights took place as planned, making SWISS the most stable airline in Europe in a challenging summer.

Our aim is to remain highly reliable for you in the future. Preferably with our own aircraft and our SWISS crew on board. However, the spare parts bottlenecks of the engines and the associated maintenance work are thwarting our plans. We will continue to be confronted with this situation and the extra maintenance that is currently required on these engines will keep up to a dozen of our aircraft grounded in the course of 2024. Therefore, these partnerships will ensure that the flights you book will take place reliably. In addition, we will focus on being a more punctual airline. We will invest manpower and millions to mitigate external Factors and to bring you more timely to your destination. This is our promise to you.

In addition to investing in our stability, we will continue to invest in our product, the customer experience and sustainability. With SWISS Senses, a completely new cabin concept awaits you as of 2025. It will be launched for the first time on our future long-haul aircraft, the Airbus 350-900. And anyone who has not yet planned a vacation for the coming year should take note of our new long-haul destinations in the SWISS route network from spring 2024, Washington, DC and Toronto. Wherever your next flight takes you, as we all know, the journey is the reward. All the more reason for us to look forward to welcoming you back aboard of SWISS soon.

Kindest regards,