ZURICH. Swiss passengers should expect higher fares as the airline’s cheap fuel cover runs off. Chief executive Jens Fehlinger said in interviews published around the new Bengaluru service that Swiss has about 80 per cent of this year’s fuel need hedged on better terms, and that the cover falls to about 50 per cent at the start of 2027. Kerosene is the carrier’s largest single cost. The difference, he said, has to be passed on in the ticket price.
He did not put a number on the increase. The size, Swiss says, depends on demand and on how many seats are for sale. Demand is still strong enough, on the airline’s account, to absorb part of a higher fare rather than all of it. The interviews, given to the SonntagsZeitung, the SonntagsBlick and the Corriere del Ticino, also covered two arguments that are not about the oil price: the Lugano to Geneva route, which Swiss will not restore, and the cockpit contract, which expires at the end of the year without a deal.
Why 2027 costs more than 2026
A hedge is a bet placed earlier, at a price the airline liked better than today’s. While it lasts, passengers do not see the full spot price of jet fuel. Swiss still has that protection on most of what it will burn before New Year. It does not have it on half of what it will burn after. Closed airspace, engines that are short, and the time it takes to retrain crews are already slowing growth, Fehlinger said, even with bookings holding up. The fare is the lever the airline can pull. It is not a new tax, and it is not a decision by Bern.
The same tight fuel market is why the country is already drawing on reserves and drafting a motorway speed cut it says it would use only in a real shortage. That 80 km/h file is about diesel on the road, not kerosene in a wing. The airline’s point is narrower: when the hedge book thins, the ticket changes, and the change is coming with the timetable for 2027 rather than with a single expensive week.
No Lugano flight, and a strike that nobody says they want
Hopes of a Swiss return to the old Lugano to Geneva link were dismissed. Fehlinger said the route does not make economic sense for the airline. Passengers from Ticino are being pointed at the train, via the Rail and Fly connection to Zurich. He left the door open only if the market changes in a fundamental way. A coming legal change that could let foreign airlines fly the domestic route, cabotage, would not, in his view, bring a quick return of air service to southern Ticino either.
The labour risk is more immediate than the fare card. The collective agreement for Swiss cockpit crew runs out at the end of the year. Talks on more predictable rosters and more flexibility have not produced an agreement, and the chance of a pilot strike is growing. Fehlinger said a strike helps nobody and that the company still wants a deal at the table. To unlock it, Swiss is now open to an outside moderator. For anyone booking a Christmas or a January trip, the two dates that matter are the hedge rolling off in the new year and a contract that expires before it. Neither has a published settlement this morning.