SWISS has announced it has agreed to extend and broaden its long-standing partnership with fellow Swiss regional carrier Helvetic Airways for a further five years. Under the terms of the agreement, Helvetic Airways will operate up to 15 aircraft throughout the SWISS European network on SWISS’s behalf under the continuing wet-lease deal.
Helvetic will operate a mix of aircraft which will include Embraer E190-E2 and E195-E2 aircraft and their predecessors the E190s and E195s on a wide variety of short and medium-length routes under a wet-lease agreement, meaning that the smaller airline will supply its aircraft with trained flight crews to operate SWISS flights under the SR flight prefix.
“Helvetic Airways fully and consistently meets all our high safety standards and all our premium aspirations and is well-liked by our customers” explains SWISS Chief Commercial Officer Heike Birlenbach. “I’m delighted that we can now extend our successful partnership. Our collaboration not only enables us to cover our operating peaks: with Helvetic’s smaller aircraft, but we can also serve destinations for which our own SWISS aircraft would be too big.”
“We are proud that the partnership which SWISS and Helvetic Airways have cultivated since 2007 will now be further extended and expanded,” adds Helvetic Airways CEO Tobias Pogorevc. “This confirms to us that we consistently meet SWISS’s high quality and reliability standards and that our advanced regional twinjets ideally supplement the SWISS aircraft fleet.”
Helvetic Airways will operate up to nine aircraft on SWISS’s behalf in the coming winter timetable for 2024/25, while up to 15 Helvetic aircraft are expected to be in service on SWISS routes for the busy 2025 summer schedules. Lufthansa Group-owned SWISS and its predecessor Swissair have traditionally used smaller partner airlines such as Helvetic and now defunct Crossair to perform many of their short-haul and feeder networks.
Helvetic Airways was founded in 2003 and began flight operations with one Fokker 100 and three destinations. The current collaboration between Helvetic Airways and SWISS International Airlines began in 2007 following the successful receipt of its IOSA certification.
In 2011 Helvetic Airways opted for an in-house maintenance company, Helvetic Airways Maintenance, to gain autonomy from third parties and to achieve greater flexibility in operations. In 2019, the first of 12 new Embraer E2 aircraft on order was delivered. The plane has room for 110 passengers and offers Helvetic ultra-low fuel consumption over other aircraft of similar size.
In the summer of 2020, Helvetic Airways announced that it would be changing its order of the 12 Embraer 190-E2s for four larger Embraer E195-E2s. With a capacity of 120 to 150 passengers, the aircraft enables the carrier to offer aircraft of various sizes and capacities to wet-lease customers such as SWISS, as well as operations under the Helvetic brand in its own right.
According to ch-aviation, the carrier operates 22 Embraer regional jets and serves eleven routes to 10 destinations across six countries under its own branding.