The Christmas and New Year period is one of the most demanding times of the year for Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) in operational terms. High travel demand, tight time schedules and winter weather conditions collectively pose rapidly shifting challenges for the company and its employees on the ground and in the air. But SWISS can post a largely positive report on its flight operations for the 2025 year-end holiday season.
Between Monday 22 December 2025 and Sunday 4 January 2026 (inclusive), SWISS crews flew a total of 629,632 travelers safely to their destinations. Some 67.3 percent of the flights concerned departed on time, a substantial 8.5-percentage-point improvement on the same period a year before. SWISS also reduced its rate of arrival delays of more than 30 minutes over the period to 15.5 percent, a year-on-year improvement of 6.7 percentage points.
“Alongside the peak summer weeks and the Easter holidays, the year-end holiday season is one of the busiest times of the year in travel terms,” says SWISS Chief Operating Officer Oliver Buchhofer. “Many people use this time to visit family and friends or take a break together to see in the New Year. So their expectations of our providing them with stable and punctual air services are correspondingly high. At SWISS we attach particular value to getting our customers to their destination and their loved ones as punctually as we can. So I’m delighted that, despite some tough winter weather, we were predominantly able to do so over this latest holiday period.”
Stable flight operations are especially hard to maintain in winter with its below-freezing temperatures. Aircraft need to be de-iced before they take off, snow must be cleared from runways and taxiways and departure slots have to be juggled in response to strong winds or snowfall; and the resulting delays can accumulate significantly over the course of the day. That SWISS was able to reduce its arrival delays so substantially under such conditions underlines how effectively the relevant processes interact and how consistently the company’s crews, scheduling and ground handling teams all work together.
SWISS achieved a schedule stability – the proportion of flights that are operated as advertised in its timetables – of 98.9 percent for the year-end holiday season, a 2.5-percentage-point improvement on the same period a year ago. A small number of flights did have to be canceled at short notice over the festive season, however, owing not least to adverse weather conditions.
“This year’s winter weather with its strong winds and sizeable snowfalls has challenged us and continues to do so,” COO Buchhofer explains, “not just at European airports like Amsterdam, Hamburg or Berlin, but also at various points along the US East Coast, where we serve multiple destinations every day. On 26 December, for instance, we were forced to cancel three of our four New York flights in view of a local winter storm that literally blew out all our previous planning.”
“A huge thank-you goes to all our people and our various partners who continue to care for our customers and find them the best possible solutions 24/7 throughout such situations,” Buchhofer concludes. “And we can look ahead with confidence, too. We now want to improve even more. So our preparations for the demanding 2026 summer holiday period are already under way.”
Tags: Oliver Buchhofer SWISS
