Record numbers for Lufthansa Group

The airlines that make up the Lufthansa Group carried a record number of passengers in 2011.  A total of 106.3m passengers chose to fly with Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Germanwings and departing bmi.  This is equivalent to growth of 7.5% compared with the previous year.  The Group increased its capacity by 9.8% overall in 2011, while its revenue seat kilometres rose by 7%.  The average passenger load factor for the aircraft correspondingly fell by two percentage points to 77.2%.

The trend of decreasing sales that emerged in autumn continued in the remaining months of the year.  The carrier said in a statement that Group-wide it proved not possible to match the level of growth recorded at start of the year. 

In October the airline posted a 21% decline in net profits for the previous quarter.  bmi is thought to be haemorrhaging money, hence the speed of the BA deal.  Whether the company will make the full-year operating profit in the "upper end of the three-digit million-euro range" previously expected is likely to prove not obtainable.

The company said that for next year, Lufthansa has lowered its planned passenger-capacity growth to 3%, compared with a 9% increase previously expected. www.lufthansa.com

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