Swiss International Air Lines Announces Historic 58% Growth in 2023

Thursday, March 7, 2024

In 2023, Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) posted a record adjusted earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of CHF 718.5 million, marking a significant increase of 58 percent compared to the previous year’s result of CHF 456 million. This achievement represents the highest Adjusted EBIT in the company’s history. Total revenues for the year reached CHF 5.3 billion, reflecting a notable 21 percent surge compared to the previous year’s level of CHF 4.4 billion. The adjusted EBIT margin for the year stood at 13.5 percent.

Despite a 39.2 percent decline in Adjusted EBIT for the fourth quarter of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022 (CHF 102.6 million compared to CHF 168.6 million), total fourth-quarter revenues increased by 6.8 percent to CHF 1.3 billion (compared to CHF 1.2 billion in Q4 2022).

This remarkable performance is attributed partly to the strong demand for air travel and the company’s competitive cost structures. SWISS plans to utilize these record earnings to further invest in its continued viability. In 2024, the company’s primary focus will be on enhancing sustainability in its flight operations, improving the air travel experience for customers, and investing in its employees. Additionally, SWISS transported approximately 16.5 million passengers in 2023, nearly a 30 percent increase compared to the previous year, while maintaining above-average reliability in its flight program.

“The challenges of 2023 were substantial,” says SWISS CEO Dieter Vranckx. “But in spite of them, we were not just successful at SWISS in financial terms: we were also Europe’s stablest airline. So I’m very proud of the work of our entire SWISS team, and I’m delighted with this strong earnings result. With 2023 we have left our crisis years firmly behind us. SWISS today is strong, stable and competitive – which are the best credentials we could have for continuing our success. At the same time, we must improve in areas such as our punctuality and our customer satisfaction; and we must continue to help make air travel more sustainable. And to these ends, we’ll be investing up to CHF 5 billion in our aircraft fleet, our customer experience, our employees and our sustainability between now and 2027.”

A positive market atmosphere and consistent scheduling reliability

The outstanding 2023 Adjusted EBIT outcome for SWISS is a testament to the company’s successful navigation through the challenges brought on by the corona crisis. “We’re thrilled that after overcoming the financially demanding years of the pandemic, we’ve managed to surpass expectations and achieve an unprecedented operating performance,” states Markus Binkert, CFO of SWISS.

Throughout 2023, the public’s eagerness to travel persisted. Concurrently, the aviation sector experienced a continued decrease in capacity due to multiple factors, such as significant staff shortages and postponed deliveries of new aircraft.“The pandemic may be behind us, but the supply and the demand within the airline sector have yet to regain the balance they had in pre-corona times,” CFO Markus Binkert explains. “Thanks not least to the extremely high reliability of our flight operations, our effective commercial steering and our competitive cost structures, we were able to achieve an outstanding earnings result in this particular market environment.”

Throughout 2023, ensuring the stability of its schedule and the execution of planned flights was a paramount goal for SWISS. To achieve this, the airline took several measures, notably adding extra buffers during peak times such as school holidays, and maintaining additional crew and aircraft on standby. These strategies led to an impressive schedule stability rate of 98.4% for the year, positioning SWISS as the most reliable airline in Europe.

“Not least,” CFO Markus Binkert concludes, “our successful restructuring and our strict cost management of the past few years paid off in 2023.”

Looking forward to 2024, enhancing on-time performance in collaboration with system partners is a key objective for SWISS. This will involve both immediate actions, like optimizing reserve planning, and long-term efforts to upgrade its flight operation infrastructure.

In the cargo sector, demand for SWISS’s air freight services has returned to levels seen before the pandemic, largely due to the expansion of air freight capacities by operators and the stabilization of global supply chains last year. CFO Binkert highlighted that the Swiss WorldCargo division significantly contributed to the airline’s earnings.

Passenger numbers saw a nearly 30% increase in 2023, with SWISS transporting about 16.5 million passengers. The airline operated 22.5% more flights, totaling over 130,000, and expanded its capacity by 28.2% in terms of available seat kilometers. Traffic volume, measured in revenue passenger kilometers, grew by 33.9%, and the systemwide seat load factor improved by 3.6 percentage points to 84.5%. The capacity for 2023 reached about 87% of pre-pandemic levels, and SWISS plans to boost its capacity to approximately 95% of those levels in 2024.

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