Key facts
Skyguide plays a crucial role in Swiss airspace management, ensuring the safety and efficiency of civil and mil-itary air traffic throughout Switzerland, as well as in specific border zones in France and Germany. As Skyguide is the country’s single air navigation service provider (ANSP), any disruption to its operations results in an im-mediate suspension of air traffic, affecting airlines, passengers and the Swiss economy. These critical responsi-bilities underline the importance of having a robust continuity mechanism that can ensure that services remain available even in crisis situations.
The air traffic disruption experienced in 2022 and 2024 demonstrated the need for greater organisational resilience. These events had immediate repercussions across the whole transport system, confirming Skyguide’s role as a strategic player whose operational continuity is essential to the stability of Switzerland’s economy, logistics and security.
The Swiss Federal Audit Office (SFAO) made various recommendations regarding business continuity manage-ment (BCM) in its 2021 audit on the implementation of minimum requirements relating to air navigation ser-vices. These included the implementation of geo-redundancy measures and disaster recovery plans (DRPs), which are vital to ensuring the availability of critical services.
In this audit, the SFAO assessed Skyguide’s BCM from a governance perspective, based on the ISO 22301 stand-ard. The SFAO found that BCM maturity is still inadequate. The management and strategy components have not yet reached an acceptable level of maturity. However, the formalisation of a BCM policy and a BCM di-rective, as well as the completion of a business impact assessment (BIA), demonstrate a desire to gradually put in place a structured business continuity management system (BCMS).