Swiss wants to increase punctuality after record profit
Published: Thursday, Mar 7th 2024, 17:11
Updated At: Thursday, Mar 7th 2024, 17:12
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Now that Swiss has definitely put the crisis behind it and closed 2023 with a record profit, it is increasingly focusing on familiar topics again: Punctuality, customer satisfaction and the green image, for example.
It was Dieter Vranckx's last annual media conference as CEO of Swiss. And to crown it all, he was once again able to present a dream result: A turnover of 5.3 billion (the same as in the year before the pandemic) and a record-high operating profit of 719 million francs. So when he takes up his new post at Lufthansa in the summer, he will leave behind a financially healthy airline - but also an unpunctual one.
This is set to change: "Although we are already very stable, we need to improve punctuality even further," said Vranckx at the annual media conference in Kloten on Thursday. Stability means that Swiss actually operated 98.4 percent of the flights that were planned a quarter earlier.
In terms of punctuality, however, Swiss only achieved 60 percent, according to Vranckx. This means that more than a third of Swiss aircraft were more than 15 minutes late on docking.
5 billion investment by 2027
Thanks to the good operating result and the fact that Swiss will be completely debt-free again in the first quarter of 2023, according to Chief Financial Officer Markus Binkert, there is now a basis for investing again in areas such as punctuality, explained Vranckx. "We will invest up to CHF 5 billion in the fleet, customer experience, employees and sustainability by 2027," he said.
It is also modernizing its fleet. Among other things, Swiss is buying new aircraft, including Airbus A350s for long-haul flights and A320Neo aircraft for short-haul flights. It is also hiring thousands of new employees to avoid bottlenecks caused by staff shortages: 3,000 pilots, flight attendants and ground staff are to be recruited in 2023 and 2024, it said.
"We have also set ourselves clear goals so that the teams know where we are heading," says Vranckx. In addition, goals have been defined together with the partners, Zurich Airport, the ground handler Swissport and the air traffic control company Skyguide. Together, they want to improve the infrastructure in Zurich.
Management change without problems according to Vranckx
Vranckx wants to bring Swiss punctuality up to 80 percent with this raft of measures. However, he will no longer be CEO to see whether they really work. He is moving to the Lufthansa Group, where he will take over as Head of Commercial in July.
This means that the entire top management of Swiss will be reorganized in the summer. Head of Commercial Tamur Goudarzi Pour, who moved to Lufthansa, was replaced by Heike Birlenbach at the beginning of the year. Chief Financial Officer Markus Binkert will become head of the SV Group in May and will then be replaced by Dennis Weber, who in turn comes from Lufthansa. In addition, Oliver Buchhofer, Head of Operations, will become a member of the Executive Board.
However, Vranckx emphasized that this radical restructuring of the management is no cause for concern. "We have a management culture in which responsibilities start at the bottom," he said. "It would be bad if Swiss got into a crisis as a result, and not a good testimony to our management culture," said the CEO.
No information on CO2 emissions
In the area of sustainability, the management also announced a contract with the Zurich-based company Climeworks, which extracts CO2 from the air and stores it underground. However, those responsible did not provide any figures on how much CO2 Swiss hopes to save as a result or how much money it is investing in Climeworks.
©Keystone/SDA
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