Lorenzo Stoll of SWISS Shares His Crystal Ball of Air Travel
Geneva, February 23, 2021: The American International Club (AIC) hosted a virtual speaking event featuring Lorenzo Stoll, the regional director of SWISS airlines. This was the first event under the new AIC President, Paige Holt, who welcomed the many AIC members attending the video conference call. AIC Vice President, Chris Benardis then introduced Lorenzo Stoll.
Mr. Stoll was open and transparent about the current state of affairs amidst the COVID pandemic. The airline industry has suffered dramatically over the past year. Lufthansa has racked up losses of €24M per day, albeit offset by €9B in government subsidies. SWISS is losing €1M daily. Passenger traffic is down substantially. In Geneva, Mr. Stoll estimated daily traffic has fallen 94% from 2019 peak levels of 350k to only 20k currently.
The cadre of SWISS employees have been a beacon of hope in these challenging times. Their unwavering commitment to SWISS and dedicated service to passengers has kept the airline running. Mr. Stoll stated that constantly changing national and local government COVID regulations has been the greatest obstacle for SWISS and its passengers. The uncertainty, as well as the severity, of these COVID restrictions, has led most potential air travelers to forego their flight plans.
Mr. Stoll expects the air travel recovery to begin later in 2021. He sees gradual improvement in 2022 and 2023, with travel patterns getting back-to-normal by early 2024. The first step will be the new 2021 summer schedule to be released this Thursday, February 25th, which will include the reopening of some direct flights from Geneva to certain European destinations.
Mr. Stoll’s long-term optimism is based on feedback from SWISS frequent travelers who stated that video conferencing works for existing business contacts, but building new relationships requires face-to-face meetings. In addition, there is pent-up demand for people wanting to visit their families abroad
Mr. Stoll’s presentation was followed by a lively Q&A session with the audience, with several engaging questions such as how will airplanes change in the future to cater to environmental needs. Over the long-run, he envisioned the use of hydrogen-based fuel, which has greater power density / less weight than existing lithium-ion batteries. He added that Zurich-based Climeworks’ air-capture technology that converts CO2 into kerosene is potentially interesting.
AIC President, Paige Holt, closed-out the event by thanking Mr. Stoll for an excellent presentation, and for his continued support of the AIC.