The airline Swiss is again forced to cut flights or outsource them to other companies.
Asked by AWP, a spokeswoman cited ‘bottlenecks in air traffic control in Europe, among ground service providers around the world as well as at Swiss’. The proportion of canceled flights is less than 5%, she added.
From Cointrin, Swiss will cut five flights a week to London. From Kloten, flights to Nuremberg are completely canceled from July to October. The frequency is also reduced for flights to Gdansk (Danzig), Dresden and Warsaw.
Long-haul flights are not spared. The company thus eliminates a Zurich-San Francisco per week. Finally, from July 4 to September 4, the Zurich-Vienna flights will be subcontracted to Austrian Airlines.
These adjustments were necessitated by resource shortages across the airline industry, the spokeswoman said. These deletions will affect approximately 2% of passengers. According to the German-speaking newspaper Blick, the first to reveal these measures, some 30,000 passengers will be affected.
Last April, Swiss had already announced a first train of flight cancellations.
Passengers for Vienna most affected
More than half of the passengers affected are those who have planned to leave for Vienna, and whose flights will be operated by Austrian Airlines. “For other passengers, individual solutions will be found, for example with changes to other flights within the Lufthansa Group or Star Alliance partners,” said the spokeswoman.
Customers will be notified by email and offered a travel alternative. They will also have the possibility of being reimbursed.
“We have taken measures to guarantee our customers the greatest stability of reservations,” said Oliver Buchhofer, head of operations, quoted in the document. In particular, it is planned that employees from other companies of the Lufthansa group will come to lend a hand to the cabin crew of Swiss.
/ATS