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After an attractive flight business in the summer months, the many travel restrictions due to Covid-19 are again disturbing.
The resumption of flight operations is delayed due to Covid-19.
A week before the publication of the winter flight schedule, Swiss took a look at their cards on Monday: It is not going well, because the opening of destinations, especially in the United States and Asia, is still a long way off. Michael Trestl, responsible for network planning at Swiss, is now taking on a flight offer that will reduce the previous year’s figure by 60-70%. In early summer, thanks to a slight upturn on long-haul routes, Swiss CEO Thomas Klühr had announced a return to around 50% and then a recovery to 70% of the previous flight’s performance for the summer of 2021.
A drop in performance in September
“Unfortunately, the network system is out of balance,” Trestl told a news conference at the Kloten headquarters. Customers book on short notice, cancel flights, or don’t even start a trip at short notice, although they can rebook flexibly and at no additional cost. Like other airlines, Swiss had to adapt to its customers because the Covid 19 situation remains unpredictable. The backlog of cancellations, which in turn leads to flight cancellations, is explained by ever-changing and sometimes hard-to-find travel restrictions.
In fact, Switzerland is now in a “restart” phase. After all, 50 of the 90 short-haul destinations and 15 of the 29 long-haul destinations are served. But there is always bad news, like recently those of Vienna and London, because they responded to new sources of contagion with defense measures. A few weeks ago there were still five daily flights planned to London, now there are only two. A smaller plane is used for Vienna and the frequency is reduced.
Customers are uneasy: In the case of Serbia, which was briefly placed on the risk list by the Federal Office of Public Health (BAG), cancellations exceeded new bookings, and this even after the quarantine obligation was lifted . All this shows that a stable winter flight schedule is almost impossible.
In its balancing act, Swiss is now aiming for the rather modest goal of being able to at least cover variable costs by resuming routes previously served. According to the latest information, Swiss currently records a loss of around 30 million Swiss francs per month. Without the burgeoning freight business, the bottom line would look much worse. A first tranche of the federal loan totaling CHF 1.5 billion has arrived in Switzerland, calming the situation and giving respite for the harsh winter months.
EU patchwork quilt disrupts airport
Zurich Airport is in close contact with Swiss, other airlines, as well as Skyguide and flight-related service providers to continuously adapt its infrastructure based on flight planning. Improvisation is the order of the day. In a substantive discussion at the newly built Circle, Operations Director Stefan Tschudin explains that, sadly, there are currently no signs of a rapid normalization of intercontinental air traffic. Since the first corona wave occurred in Asia, flights there should be possible again as soon as possible, but even there the bulkheads are narrow almost everywhere. If you’re flying into Shanghai, Hong Kong, or Singapore, it’s mostly cargo – a handful of passengers on board is the advantage.
It is even more difficult for the head of airport operations that there are no uniform travel rules in Europe. The resulting patchwork quilt also unsettles those who wish to travel. Furthermore, it is probably one of the reasons why the recovery in Europe is currently around 30% weaker than the main domestic markets of China (almost at the pre-crisis level) and the US (around 40%). % of flight performance in 2019). The Schengen area was evenly opened in the summer, but only on the immigration side.
Rapid Covid-19 tests
In Tschudin’s assessment, a quarantine of ten or more days, as is often required in Europe, is an exclusion criterion for starting a trip. And the economic damage to be weighed against the risks of health policy is enormous, also for tourism, exports or simply because people cannot return to work after their trip. There is also no statistically confirmed data that the number of cases, with a low and stable hospitalization rate and a low mortality rate, is now increasing again due to Swiss travel across national borders.
A possible approach to prevent quarantines would be for flight passengers to perform a PCR test (PCR stands for polymerase chain reaction) when traveling to or from the corresponding areas, especially if the number of cases increases. “Because we have to live with the virus for longer, we have to break new paths,” is Tschudin’s conclusion. Of course, tests are never perfect, but something must be done to make travel possible again. Tschudin tells of a friend who did the required PCR test before an Etihad Airways flight from Zurich, then a second after arriving in Abu Dhabi, to have to go into quarantine after two negative results.
At the airport, preparations are underway to develop test capacity. If it were possible to test for Covid-19 in about six hours with feedback, a big hurdle would be overcome. Specialists are already doing this for Swiss crews who, for example, cannot enter China, including Hong Kong, without a negative result, now and faster. Novartis has announced rapid PCR tests, which is encouraging.
Tschudin also points to the need for economic testing. At the Airport Medical Center this currently costs CHF 200 and more, which of course puts many off. Efforts within the international airport association go in the direction of PCR testing to make it possible to travel to the most affected areas without the risk of quarantine and to integrate testing into a registration process, but also to include health authorities . they must be brought on board.
In Tschudin’s assessment, the negative consequences of travel restrictions should not be underestimated. Swiss tourism depends on foreign guests, as do companies on business trips. Most important, therefore, is a coordinated approach in Europe to enable safe and predictable travel here, even in Corona times.
