Despite a significant increase in civil air traffic of over 10 percent, the Swiss air navigation service provider Skyguide incurred a loss of 18.9 million Swiss francs in 2024. The main reasons were high investments in technical infrastructure and regulatory air traffic charges.
Last year, Skyguide safely guided a record 1,328,974 flights (both overflights of Swiss airspace and approaches to Swiss airports) through its airspace under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR). With 479,314 IFR takeoffs and landings, Swiss airports themselves recorded 4.9 percent more movements than in 2023.
According to company data, IFR traffic increased at Geneva and Zurich airports, as well as at most regional airfields. High traffic peaks in commercial aviation and highly variable demand across different aviation segments characterized this period of extremes. Scheduled and business flights increased, while charter and cargo flights declined. Specifically, scheduled airlines saw an increase of 8.1 percent (compared to -4.5 percent in 2019), low-cost carriers increased by 15.4 percent (compared to +6.4 percent in 2019), charter flights decreased by 4.1 percent (compared to -13.2 percent in 2019), business flights increased by 1.3 percent (compared to +11.8 percent in 2019), and cargo flights decreased by 0.9 percent (compared to +18.9 percent in 2019).
The number of military flight movements declined again in 2024, falling by 2.0 percent to 83,519 (previous year: 85,237). Last year, Skyguide also supported 222 live and hot missions as well as 2,284 tactical operations of the Air Force (previous year: 193 and 2,363, respectively).
Compared to the previous year, Skyguide also recorded a slight decrease in punctuality in 2024. According to the Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) metrics, 95.3 percent of all flights controlled by Skyguide were handled on time (previous year: 97.7 percent). At airports, delays were primarily weather-related, while delays on inland flights were equally attributable to technical problems, weather conditions, and capacity constraints resulting from unexpected increases in traffic.
All images: Skyguide
Nevertheless, Skyguide's punctuality, with an average ATFM delay of 0.73 minutes per flight, is still significantly above the European average (1.58 minutes ATFM delay per flight).
Despite very high traffic volumes in the summer, with peaks exceeding those of 2019, Skyguide's operating revenues remained relatively stable in 2024 at CHF 528.4 million, compared to CHF 529.7 million in the previous year. Operating costs increased by CHF 26.4 million compared to 2023, reaching CHF 545.3 million.
