At the beginning of September, Swiss carrier Swiss was still planning to offer seat capacity equivalent to 50% of that for the 2019/2020 winter season. The second wave of covid-19, which includes new travel and quarantine restrictions, will have decided otherwise.
Swiss has just published its winter timetable. And while the Swiss carrier will be operating almost 85% of its former network, seat capacity will not exceed 30% to 40% than the one proposed last year.
In fact, flight planning is becoming more complex by the day as a result of restrictions imposed in a very short space of time. This in turn has an impact on international mobility. "In view of the global evolution of the pandemic and the resulting travel restrictions and quarantine rules, instead of effective testing procedures, there is a need to ensure that the virus is not transmitted to other countries, our flight schedule for next winter does not meet our initial expectations "says Tamur Goudarzi Pour, Chief Commercial Officer at Swiss.
In all, the airline is planning flights this winter to 67 destinations from Zurich and 21 stopovers from Geneva.
Intercontinental resists thanks to freight
On the long-haul segment, Swiss is confirming services to Newark, New York JFK, Chicago, San Francisco, Montreal, São Paolo, Tel Aviv, Mumbai, Bangkok, Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai. Although these flights carry few passengers, they are still necessary because of the large volume of freight.
At the end of the month, the company will be adding Boston with two flights a week (three flights in March). Dubai and Johannesburg will also return to the network with three weekly frequencies by the end of October. Swiss intends to intensify its service to Dubai with five weekly flights.
Also in the Gulf, Edelweiss, a simplified services subsidiary, will offer one rotation per week to Oman.
With the arrival of spring, Swiss should resume its services on Delhi, Los Angeles and Miami. Only flights to Nairobi and Dar es Salaam will not be operated this winter season.
More "secondary" towns in Europe
In Europe, from the end of October Swiss will once again be linking Zurich with Munich and Wroclaw (Poland). Next February, they will be joined by Birmingham, London City, Luxembourg and Nuremberg. In March, Swiss will be Graz (Austria).
In December, the airline will also be offering services to Bilbao, Naples and Thessaloniki, as well as more frequencies to Amsterdam, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hamburg and London Heathrow.
Departing from GenevaSwiss is resuming flights this October to Marrakech, Prague and Pristina (Kosovo). Moscow will be added at the beginning of November. From mid-December, routes will connect Geneva with the business cities of Dublin, Göteborg, London (Gatwick), Malaga, St Petersburg, Stockholm and Valencia. Swiss will re-establish direct services between Geneva and London City in February 2021.
Switzerland applies a 10-day quarantine for travellers coming from areas considered to be at high health risk (the whole of France excluding border regions). However, theThe Swiss Federal Office of Health confirms that passengers transferring in Zurich and Geneva are authorised if their stay on Swiss territory does not exceed 24 hours..
