Within the Lufthansa Group, SWISS is by far the most profitable airline, with margins that are 10x better than at Lufthansa. Despite that, it’s interesting to note that the airline is significantly overstaffed, to the point that the company is offering flight attendants money to resign.
In this post:
SWISS has too many flight attendants, wants cost savings
aeroTELEGRAPH reports how SWISS management has informed the carrier’s roughly 4,500 flight attendants of the need to reduce staffing levels. Long story short, the airline has too many flight attendants due to a combination of engine issues that are keeping (A220 and A320-family) aircraft grounded, plus a shortage of pilots, which creates an imbalance.
According to the memo to flight attendants, “balanced inventory levels will not be achieved in the second half of the year as previously planned, but probably not until 2027.” So the issue isn’t a lack of demand for flights — quite to the contrary, SWISS is wet leasing planes — but instead, lack of ability to actually operate enough flights on SWISS metal.
The other thing is that SWISS is prioritizing trying to save on costs right now, given the incredible uncertainty and headwinds the industry faces, including the conflict involving Iran, and the spike in oil prices. Therefore the airline believes that short term cost savings are needed, and one way to achieve that is through “incentivized measures to reduce excess cabin crew.”
Several months ago, SWISS indicated it was overstaffed by around 400 flight attendants, and I imagine that situation hasn’t improved.
SWISS offering voluntary severance, doesn’t rule out layoffs
How is SWISS addressing its staffing shortages? First, the airline is offering 15,000 CHF (~19,000 USD) to any full-time flight attendant who voluntarily leaves the company by August 2026 at the latest.
If the airline doesn’t see enough volunteers that way, the company will explore other measures. This could include extended unpaid leave during overstaffed months, reduced work hours, extended maternity leave, etc. The goal is to reduce the staff surplus “quickly, effectively, and in a targeted manner.”
If these initiatives aren’t successful, then forced layoffs aren’t off the table either. As the airline explains, “should we fail to achieve this, redundancies cannot be ruled out as a last resort.”
What I find interesting here is that the airline expects to achieve balanced staffing levels by next year, and presumably that would be achieved through the fleet continuing to grow, the natural attrition from flight attendants quitting or retiring, continuing to hire pilots, etc.
So you’d almost think the airline would first seek opportunities to offer unpaid leave, since those flight attendants could be needed again next year. But I suppose the logic is that generally keeping employees more junior is ideal in terms of pay scales, given how flight attendant pay works (junior flight attendants are paid less than senior flight attendants).
Bottom line
SWISS has hundreds of flight attendants too many, due primarily to a combination of grounded aircraft and not having enough pilots. This is dragging on longer than expected, and with the global uncertainty right now, the company is making it a priority to reduce costs. So the airline is offering 15,000 CHF to any flight attendant who voluntarily leaves the company.
If that doesn’t result in enough volunteers, the airline will consider other measures, which could even include layoffs. Quite honestly, I imagine that SWISS will be far from the only airline looking to reduce headcount in the coming weeks and months, given what’s going on.
What do you make of this SWISS situation?
So Carsten is going to work destroying the best airline in his group. What a backpfeifengesicht.
The incentive is worth less than a four-month equivalent of an average salary. I am not sure who would take the bait...
They realised that the Air Baltic wet lease is more profitable than actually operating the flights with swiss-paid employees.
Now they get rid of the FAs so that they can be short on staff and operate more wet lease from Latvia, which LHG anyway partly owns. It's another twist on Spohr's subsidiary game.
If the issue was just A220 availability they would dry-lease them from Air Baltic.
Carsten Spohr tatics again? Soon he will start Swiss City Airlines
It already existed for a long time, it was Swiss European Air Lines then Swiss Global Air Lines.
Their exposure to the conflict in the Gulf region is rather limited, given their limited network to that region (they only serve TLV and DXB). I guess more important is slump in demand across the Atlantic, which I expect to result in frequency reductions.
If they fly to more destinations, they would not be overstaffed.
The issue is that Swiss can't fly a large portion of its fleet because of engine issues.
They could literally fly 300 destinations once per week and it wouldn't change the problem.
Why isn't the View All Comments Working?
If the intent is to reduce cost by eliminating senior attendants, I hope for them that service levels are maintained when there is a majority of junior attendants.
Logout and back in again fixed it for me (it's a new problem today to be fair)
Not working for me either. Had to go back out to main page and click to comment section from there.
I have been experiencing this problem for 2-3 days. I can only access comments from the main page. Logging out then logging back in did not correct the problem. Using Chrome on a Win11 PC.
Sorry for the issues in the past few days with the comments, this has now been resolved. :-)
Not true.
Still getting 403 error messages, and saying "Amazon Cloudfront distribution is configured to block..."
American Airlines should try this same strategy to get rid of the lazy, overpaid fatties staffing their flights.
Watch out, 1990 is going to come after you :) He really took it to heart when I expressed a similar opinion.
No doubt wet leasing all those airBaltic A220s is cheaper than using Swiss paid crews...
Hmm. They may have more figured out regarding the headwinds and uncertainty than they're willing to admit.
Sounds like something being pushed down from the LH group. They are offering 15K CHF only because it would cost a lot more to layoff staff under Swiss law.
Swiss redundancy legislation doesn’t mandate much financially unless you’re over 50, compared with the EU /UK
Switzerland does not require a specific reason to lay off people as opposed to most European countries. Most Swiss companies would give a little something out of courtesy... But standard unemployment benefits are OK (roughly 70% of your salary below 190k usd for 2 years, 80% if you have children)
Swiss law offers peanuts in protection (okay better than the US but amongst the worst on the European continent).
-1 month during the first year of employment
-2 months from the 2nd to 9th year
-3 months for 10+ years
Pretty sure that if they had to lay off employees they'd most likely have 2 to 9 years of employment, so they'd probably end up paying around 10k CHF.
It's worth noting that...
Swiss law offers peanuts in protection (okay better than the US but amongst the worst on the European continent).
-1 month during the first year of employment
-2 months from the 2nd to 9th year
-3 months for 10+ years
Pretty sure that if they had to lay off employees they'd most likely have 2 to 9 years of employment, so they'd probably end up paying around 10k CHF.
It's worth noting that employees who do accept such an offer would get penalized by the government unemployment agency if they were to claim unemployment benefits after (70-80% of the salary depending on if they have children), as they would be deemed unemployed by their own choice without a compelling reason. That penalty could very well be 1-3 months of unemployment benefits.
Unless some of the employees were going to quit or have other plans, this isn't a move that will force many to leave.
"...given the incredible uncertainty and headwinds the industry faces, including the conflict involving Iran, and the spike in oil prices."
It's Biden's fault.
You MAGA much, Billy?
Funny. I re-call being critized both if you leave, or if you started a new one.