The flag carrier airline of Switzerland, SWISS, has announced its first quarterly profit since the beginning of the COVID pandemic. The company had been in the red for six months in 2021, but successfully made a small operational profit in Q3.

SWISS and Lufthansa report profit

The airline, which is a subsidiary of German airline Lufthansa, wrote in a statement that the number of passengers increased by 88 percent in July, 124 percent in August and tripled in September, compared with last year. The news is seen as a positive for travel agents, airports and related businesses, who have suffered during the forced shutdowns of the last two years.

The company claimed that people going abroad for their holidays was one of the key reasons why profits surged. The international company made 707 million Swiss francs in the third quarter of 2021, leading to a profit of 6,7 million Swiss francs total.

Struggle to return to airport capacity in Switzerland

In the summer, the company announced it was expanding its network to 55 percent of what it was pre-pandemic, in what Chief Financial Office Markus Binkert called an increased capacity for the market. However, it must be noted that a significant number of SWISS’ planes have been switched to “long term parking mode,” making them unavailable to expand operations quickly.

Despite the positive news, Watson reported that there was still a long way to go as SWISS has only carried 3,7 million passengers in 2021 so far, a decline of 15 percent compared with 2020. Binkert also braced investors for further losses as “for seasonal reasons, it will not be possible for SWISS to build on the positive figures from the third part of the year.”