Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) plans to collaborate with Air Baltic of Latvia in the coming winter timetable period. The collaboration will take the form of a wet-lease agreement (i.e., the lease-in of both aircraft and crew), under which Air Baltic will perform SWISS flights on SWISS’ behalf. The partnership is intended to further stabilise SWISS’ flight schedules and provide even more reliability for its customers’ travel plans. It should also further ease the present pressures on the company’s cabin personnel.
The services concerned will be operated by up to six of Air Baltic’s highly advanced and CO2-efficient Airbus A220-300 aircraft, which seat up to 145 passengers. SWISS itself operates 21 such twin-engine jets. The Air Baltic aircraft will perform flights throughout the SWISS European route network which had previously been planned for SWISS’ own operation.
Irrespective of this development, SWISS will continue to steadily recruit and train more of its own cabin personnel. The new collaboration with Air Baltic is also viewed as a complement to SWISS’ existing partnership with Helvetic Airways. On the latter front, in addition to the six Helvetic aircraft already operated all year round on SWISS’ behalf, further Helvetic Airways equipment may also be flexibly deployed on SWISS’ routes in future to cover peaks in demand.
