Swiss COO speaks plainly "Can't be satisfied with punctuality"

The Swiss airline Swiss is failing to meet its punctuality targets. COO Oliver Buchhofer admits that the airline cannot be satisfied with these figures and announces measures to improve them.

Swiss manager Oliver Buchhofer (48) speaks plainly: "We cannot be satisfied with our current punctuality figures." During the fall vacations, 38 percent of Swiss flights were unpunctual.

More precisely: they were more than 15 minutes late on departure or arrival compared to the published flight schedule. For 2024 as a whole, this figure is 37%. In the previous year, it was 40 percent. So a slight improvement.

In March, the airline emphasized that the goal was to improve the punctuality rate to 80 percent. In other words, only 20 percent of flights are delayed.

"We need to become more robust"

In August, there was talk of 70 percent. "We were only able to achieve our punctuality targets over the vacation period on days when the weather cooperated and the bottlenecks in Zurich and in European airspace were limited," Buchhofer told Blick. "We have to become more robust."

However, Swiss is often not responsible for delays. In October, for example, the weather caused problems. When the winds are unfavorable, it is necessary to change the posts at Zurich Airport, causing arrival and departure routes to cross. This causes longer intervals between planes taking off and landing.

Another reason: too few staff. This regularly leads to delays in the congested European airspace.

Other airlines also suffer from delays

But it's not just Swiss that suffers from delays, Lufthansa does too: in the second quarter of 2024, only 72% of flights were on time. At Air France, the figure is 62 percent and at British Airways 66 percent.

Nevertheless, it cannot be the claim of a premium airline if "82% of all flights land with less than an hour's delay", as Swiss writes.

But Swiss wants to work on punctuality. That is why it is running working groups with its partners Swissport, Zurich Airport and Skyguide. A spokeswoman explained to Blick that processes are to be optimized in the long term and that digital innovations such as AI-based tools for predictive resource planning, improved use of landing and take-off capacities and additional resources in the meteorological service will help.

It is also about having to pay less compensation. "We have noticed an increase in compensation requests compared to last year," the Swiss spokesperson told Blick. However, passengers are only entitled to compensation if the flight is delayed by at least three hours.