SWISS has agreed to wet lease up to six Airbus A220-300 aircraft from airBaltic, allowing the Lufthansa Group company to stabilize its flight schedules and provide more reliability for its customer’s travel plans.
A wet lease agreement
On Friday, SWISS announced it had agreed on a collaboration with Latvian carrier airBaltic for the coming winter timetable period. The partnership includes wet leasing up to six Airbus A220-300 aircraft on SWISS’ behalf, stabilizing its schedule, providing more reliability and easing the present pressures on the cabin personnel.
airBaltic will operate flights throughout the SWISS European route network, which had previously been planned for SWISS’ own operation. Given this is a wet lease agreement, airBaltic will also provide the crew for each flight. The A220-300 has a capacity for up to 145 passengers.
Travelers taking a SWISS flight operated by airBaltic can essentially expect the usual SWISS service product. “airBaltic is an ideal wet lease partner for us,” says SWISS Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) Tamur Goudarzi Pour. “Like us, they operate the highly advanced, innovative, and ecofriendly Airbus A220-300. And they have already performed flights for other airlines of the Lufthansa Group this summer with impressive reliability.”
The new collaboration with the Latvian airline is a complement to SWISS’ existing partnership with Helvetic Airways, which also wet leases six aircraft all year round. Furthermore, the SWISS-Helvetic partnership has enough flexibility to add more planes in the future to cover peaks in demand. Helvetic Airways operates 604 weekly flights on behalf of SWISS, adding nearly 70,500 seats. That’s 25% of all SWISS’ flights in August 2022.
Cabin and pilots negotiations
SWISS negotiated with airBaltic the wet leasing of six aircraft to help the company relieve the present pressures on its cabin crew and pilots. The airline is currently in the midst of tough negotiations with the cabin crew and pilot unions. Earlier this week, it was reported that SWISS crew union, Aeropers, was seeking new amendments to a proposed collective agreement. Their plan is to ensure the stability of flight operations over the summer and autumn seasons, and the cabin crew members have rejected by over 80% the latest agreement.
The previous collective agreement between SWISS and the pilots expired in March and both parties have been in a painful negotiating process; Aeropers has even warned that if SWISS does not offer adequate solutions, then the pilots will show the management how dissatisfied they are.
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SWISS first-half operating profit
In the first six months of 2022, SWISS returned to profit and posted an operating result of 67 million CHF (US$69.6 million) for the period. The airline benefited in particular from strong booking demand and the improved profitability provided by its completed restructuring activities.
SWISS carried 5.3 million passengers in the first six months of 2022, five times more than in the same period last year. This increase was also reflected in the revenues, which totaled 1.8 billion CHF (US$1.87 billion). Finally, despite the likelihood of an economic slowdown, SWISS is also confident of returning to profit in its 2022 full-year results.