SWISS carries more passengers than ever with fewer flights

Cape Town - Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) transported 16 896 233 passengers in 2017, a further 2.3% improvement on last year’s record result.

The new record was also achieved with fewer flights: 140 074 systemwide - a 4.0% decline. Of these, 121 885 (down 4.1%) were within Europe and 18 189 (down 3.3%) were on intercontinental routes.

Systemwide passenger capacity for the year was raised 3.1% in available seat-kilometre (ASK) terms. Systemwide traffic volume, measured in revenue passenger-kilometres (RPK), was up 4.5%.

On its European network SWISS reduced its ASK capacity by 2.1% and saw RPK volume decline by 0.6%; and on intercontinental services ASK capacity was increased 5.4%, while RPK traffic volume rose 6.5%.

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Seat load factor for European services was improved 1.1 percentage points to 77.5%. Seat load factor for intercontinental services was raised 0.9 percentage points to 84.3%.

Systemwide seat load factor for 2017 amounted to 82.4%, a year-on-year improvement of 1.1 percentage points.

The airfreight business of Swiss WorldCargo achieved a cargo load factor (by volume) of 80.1% for 2017, a 4.9-percentage-point improvement on its prior-year level. Annual cargo sales were also raised 13.0% in revenue tonne-kilometre terms.

In December 2017 SWISS carried 1 287 955 passengers, a 1.2% increase on the prior-year period. A total of 10 785 flights were operated in the month, 3.7% fewer than in December 2016.

December ASK capacity was up 2.8% on its prior-year level, while RPK traffic volume for the month was a 2.4% improvement on December 2016. Seat load factor slipped accordingly to 80.1%, a decline of 0.4 percentage points.

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