SWISS Airlines affected during the first half of the year

Airline Swiss has again suffered greatly from the coronavirus outbreak in the first six months of the year. Revenue fell 43.5 percent year-on-year to 659.3 million francs, Swiss announced today. Sales in the first half of the year before the pandemic had stood at 2.57 billion. The operating loss amounted to 398.2 million francs after -266.4 million francs in the previous year.

The cause of the poor performance was still the coronavirus pandemic, which plunged the aviation industry into the worst crisis in its history: while almost 8.8 million passengers flew with Swiss in the first half of 2019 - i.e. pre-coronavirus - the figure is now only one million.

Q2 fared a little better. However, this does not detract from the fact that the situation is extremely tense due to the still unpredictable development of the pandemic, said the airline’s CEO Dieter Vranckx, quoted in the note.

Two-thirds of the planes are currently back in service, reportedly, and Swiss was serving 90 percent of destinations from pre-coronavirus at the end of June. However, total capacity is only about 50-55% of that pre-crisis capacity. The opening of the U.S. as an important traffic region is particularly important for further recovery, the note points out.

For the year as a whole, the airline is counting on capacity equivalent to 40% of 2019.