Swiss Supreme Court Backs Airline's Right to Dismiss Cabin Crew Who Refused Covid Shots
Published on 09/18/2026 at 09:50 | Editorial boerse-global.de
Two flight attendants who lost their jobs at Swiss International Air Lines after declining a company-imposed Covid-19 vaccination requirement have failed to overturn their dismissals, after Switzerland's highest court ruled that the terminations were lawful.
The Federal Supreme Court issued its first ruling in the matter on 27 May 2026, siding with the airline. A second judgment followed on 30 June 2026, reinforcing the same outcome and confirming once more that dismissal over a refused Covid vaccination was legally sound.
Why the court weighed the airline's operating needs so heavily
At the heart of the dispute was a balancing exercise: how far an employer's interest in keeping flights running can justify intruding on an individual worker's personal integrity. The judges came down firmly on the side of the carrier's specific operational circumstances.
International entry rules proved pivotal. Cross-border flying demanded that the airline be able to deploy crew at short notice and reshuffle rosters as conditions shifted, and the court accepted that this flexibility depended on a workforce that met those requirements.
The panel also noted that the vaccines in question held official authorisation. That finding gave the employer room to build its workplace protection policy around the recommendations issued by the relevant public health authorities.
In practical terms, the court treated the vaccination directive as a legitimate exercise of the company's right to issue instructions, because it served to preserve crew deployability under strict international rules.
Union warns of a precedent that reaches beyond aviation
Not everyone welcomed the outcome. ABF Schweiz, which represents cabin crew, described the rulings as a dangerous precedent for employment law more broadly.
From the critics' standpoint, tying job security to medical measures strikes at core questions of bodily autonomy — matters they argue should not be quietly subordinated to commercial or organisational pressures inside an employment relationship.
Even so, the decisions give a reference point for how pandemic-era measures are treated in the workplace. They show that dismissal protections stay tightly bound to whether staff can actually be deployed in heavily regulated, internationally exposed industries — at least where an employer can point to official health guidance as its basis.
