92,988 seats on 338 flights: Swiss and Edelweiss planned for routes between Switzerland and the USA in April. This is shown by data from the aviation service provider OAG. Assuming a monthly capacity of around 1.5 million seats at Swiss, that’s a little over six percent. Flights to the USA are in demand: both for business trips and for vacations.
This planning is now obsolete. Donald Trump has announced that travelers who are in the Schengen area 14 days before the scheduled arrival will no longer be allowed to enter the country for the next 30 days from Friday. Switzerland also belongs to the Schengen area. Swiss and the Lufthansa Group say that the situation is being assessed. But it stands to reason that the capacities will at best be shut down, if not completely destroyed.
First flight to Washington D.C. called off
The airline has already postponed Swiss’s first flight to Washington D.C., which was actually scheduled for March 29, “until a later date”. Originally, she wanted to fly to the capital every day.
The measures taken by the USA are likely to hit Swiss and the entire Lufthansa Group. The temporary cancellation of flights to China was already a cut, let alone the reduction in capacity on all routes by up to 50 percent. A comparison shows how important USA routes are: Swiss serves 13 destinations in the country, more than in any other overseas destination. Canada is in second place with four destinations. The Lufthansa Group flies to the USA as often as daily to China in the normal times.
Created: 03/12/2020, 11:26 AM
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