President of Swiss Airline makes work plan one year in advance

Airline workers are stuck. Switzerland’s cockpit staff recently threatened to go on strike – partly because the crew received their deployment plans too soon. As for childcare, there are only a few fixed days off. As part of the agreement reached, Swiss allowed teams to present their work schedule on the 18th of each month – one week earlier than before.

It could have been even better: Easyjet’s plans to operate in Switzerland are known one year in advance. Now a smaller Swiss airline is catching up: Starting January 1, 2023, Chair Airlines will launch a new block deployment plan throughout the year. The basic work pattern is as follows: five days of work, four days of leave, then five days of work, three days of leave.

This program must be implemented for at least eight months per year. The exceptions are summer and fall, the high season, which requires more flexibility from all employees.

Plan your vacation a year in advance

President CEO Shpend Ibrahimi (51) explains to Blick, “Teams do a lot. Every employee has the right to a regulated private life and must be able to maintain his social circle. We give credit to this with the transition to the new operational planning.» Obviously, he has been working on this idea since 2020, but due to the pandemic, it was not possible to implement it before.

The other side of the coin: President employees need to plan their holidays and private lives months in advance in order to benefit from the new system. Is this a problem? “Block distribution planning is a wish of employees,” Ibrahimi replies.

Work blocks can be changed internally if employees want to plan differently throughout the year. There is also provision for short-term absences due to illness: one crew per flight is always on standby. It is not on active duty, but should be available at all times.

President needs to recruit

Such business planning systems are quite unusual for smaller airlines. Because airline is less flexible when it comes to operational planning. And therefore it needs more staff. This increases costs significantly. “We need to hire ten percent more staff to be able to implement this operating model,” explains Ibrahimi. With an existing workforce of 90 people in the cabin, nine jobs will be added.

Is it a worthwhile investment? “Through this measure, we can reduce the fatigue of pilots and crew and thus contribute to safety in our flight operations,” says Ibrahimi. He also points out that unlike, for example, Easyjet and Swiss, the President did not have to cancel a single flight last summer due to staff shortages.

It is not yet clear where additional personnel will be recruited. Swiss also announced that it will bring 1,500 new employees on board next year. Not only pilots and flight attendants, but also ground personnel. Group-wide, the Lufthansa Group is even looking to hire 20,000 new employees – a battle for personnel ensues.

The president has recently been criticized for recruiting foreign workers from low-wage countries. Ibrahimi denies the accusation: “We are looking at Switzerland first. And if we employ foreign workers, they are paid according to the prevailing, fixed rate. So you earn no less than a Swiss.”