SWISS increases punctuality during the holidays despite wind and snow | News
The Christmas and New Year period is operationally one of the most demanding times of the year for Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS). High travel demand, tight schedules and winter weather combine to create rapidly changing challenges for the company and its employees on the ground and in the air. But SWISS can publish a largely positive report on its flight operations for the 2025 year-end holidays.
Between Monday, December 22, 2025 and Sunday, January 4, 2026 (inclusive), SWISS crews flew a total of 629,632 travelers safely to their destinations. About 67.3 percent of the flights involved departed on time, a significant improvement of 8.5 percentage points compared to the same period a year earlier. SWISS also reduced arrival delays of more than 30 minutes over the period to 15.5 percent, a year-over-year improvement of 6.7 percentage points.
“Alongside the peak summer weeks and the Easter holidays, the end-of-year holidays are one of the busiest times of the year in terms of travel,” says Oliver Buchhofer, Chief Operating Officer of SWISS. “Many people use this time to visit family and friends or take a break together to ring in the New Year. Their expectations regarding the provision of stable and punctual air services are therefore correspondingly high. At SWISS we attach particular importance to getting our customers to their destination and their loved ones as punctually as possible. So I am very pleased that we have succeeded in this, despite the bad winter weather, especially during the recent holiday period.”
Stable flight operations are especially difficult to maintain in winter, as temperatures are below freezing. Planes must be defrosted before takeoff, snow must be cleared from runways and taxiways, and departure slots must be juggled in response to high winds or snowfall; and the resulting delays can accumulate significantly over the course of the day. That SWISS was able to reduce arrival delays so substantially under such conditions underlines how effectively the relevant processes interact and how consistently the company’s crews, planning and ground handling teams all work together.
SWISS achieved schedule stability – the proportion of flights operated as advertised in the timetable – of 98.9 percent for the end-of-year holidays, an improvement of 2.5 percentage points compared to the same period a year ago. However, a small number of flights had to be canceled at short notice during the festive period, not least due to poor weather conditions.
“This year’s winter weather with its strong winds and heavy snowfall has challenged us and continues to do so,” explains COO Buchhofer, “not only at European airports such as Amsterdam, Hamburg or Berlin, but also at various points along the US east coast, where we serve multiple destinations every day. For example, on December 26, we were forced to cancel three of our four flights to New York due to a local winter storm that literally threw our previous planning into disarray.”
“A big thank you goes to all our people and our various partners who continue to take care of our customers and find the best possible solutions for them in such situations 24/7,” concludes Buchhofer. “And we can also look ahead with confidence. We now want to get even better. Our preparations for the demanding summer holiday period of 2026 have already started.”
