The news service revealed that Swiss - which replaced the beleaguered Swissair, and absorbed regional airline, Crossair - intends to reduce its fleet by a total of eight aircraft, cut back its flight plan, and axe some 300 jobs.

Despite the cutbacks, the company's chairman and CEO, Peter Bouw and Andre Dose revealed that Swiss performed better in the third quarter of this year than was predicted. However, analysts do not believe that the company has done enough to achieve its stated goals of breaking even by next year and turning a profit in 2004.

'The management at Swiss are not yet rid of the old mindset; they want to retain everything and lose no jobs at all, if possible. But there must be further cuts - there is no way round it. Swiss is pursuing a gradual cutback, step by step, instead of doing it all at once,' Christoph Bohli, an analyst at Bank Sarasin told Swissinfo.